A Global alliance of over 1,300 partner organisations focused on advocacy for women’s, children’s and adolescents’ health and well-being, the Partnership for Maternal, Newborn and Child Health (PMNCH), has called for increased investment in youths and adolescents for nations to function well. 

The organisation warned that too many of today’s adolescents and youths would fall short of their potential if current policy and investment approaches fail to meet their needs. 

Senior Strategic Adviser and Team Lead for Global Forum for Adolescents,  PMNCH, Anshu Mohan, stated this during a virtual media interaction ahead of  the 1.8 Billion Young People for Change Campaign and The Global Forum for Adolescents slated to take place from October 11-12, 2023. 

Noting that calls had been made towards mobilising $1 billion for adolescent girls’ wellbeing programmes, Mohan explained that PMNCH’s participation was very important in the event based on the conversations that erupted among stakeholders including top government officials on health, gender, inter-governmental affairs and many others, where they pointed out that the global campaign is important for adolescent girls as it concerns their wellbeing. 

She said: “The 1.8 billion Young People for Change Campaign is to bring together young people and demand for more investment, policies, programmes that solve their needs. 

“The Global Forum is one of the biggest milestones under that campaign, and it has three objectives. One is to bring together policymakers and young people, as well as other stakeholders including academia and donors to discuss solutions, evidence and also gaps that have been identified and how those solutions can be used for scaling up and to addressing those gaps.

“So, again, by the very positioning of it, the Global Forum for Adolescents is very unique; never has there been a forum of this sort which is for adolescents dedicated for them, to their issues and needs and will bring together, as I said before, multiple constituencies that are interested in and championing the cause of adolescents. We will bring new evidence. 

“So there will be sharing of new evidence that we have done over the past three, four years, which includes the Adolescent Well-being Framework. This framework includes the BMG collection, an investment case for adolescent well being as well as approaches for measurement of adolescent well-being. 

“So on one hand, you will have all this new evidence and knowledge and then we will bring together stakeholders to act on this new knowledge. 

“For us, the Global Forum for Adolescents is on multiple level, multi-pronged approaches to make sure that we bring in the request for continued financing, political attention for adolescents and young people.”