Step Up, Link Up, Speak Up: Mentoring Toolkit

This toolkit was developed to support Link Up's mentoring programme, which is designed to build the confidence and leadership skills of young people to participate and advocate for their priorities in policy processes, especially around sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR) issues. It was developed to support youth advocates to become mentors for their peers and for creating strong, informed mentoring relationships that are mutually beneficial for mentors and mentees. As stated in the facilitator's guide, "A desk review of current and past mentoring programmes has shown that typically, mentoring for young people is a tool used to influence behaviour change, rather than to build the leadership and capacity of mentors and mentees. After multiple community dialogues, as part of Link Up, key priorities around the rights and health of young people emerged. A resounding trend was that young people, particularly young people facing multiple layers of marginalisation, felt that their needs and desires were not upheld in the structures of their healthcare system, governments or societies. To address these issues, the mentoring programme was developed as a collaborative process with youth advocates from Link Up, drawing on their own lived experiences working in their communities to advance their agendas. Link Up implementing partners merged the results of community dialogues and mentoring training workshops to build a sustainable mentoring programme that could be replicated elsewhere." The tool can be used by organisations developing a mentoring programme, or can be used by individuals interested in mentoring for advocacy, and is meant to be useful for people at all stages of mentoring. As stated in the tool, "the tool is designed to be used by youth advocates interested in mentoring, whether they are new to advocacy and interested in developing their skills, or they are experienced in advocacy and want to share their skills and experiences with others by becoming a mentor." The toolkit consists of three parts:

• Step Up, Link Up, Speak Up: A facilitator's guide for a workshop on mentoring for youth advocacy - includes an outline for a 3-day workshop for mentors and mentees, looking at issues such advocacy and participation, who can be a mentor, matching mentors and mentees, developing a mentorship plan, and tips for successful mentoring. It also includes workshop handouts.
• Step Up, Link Up, Speak Up: A tool to support mentoring for youth advocacy - includes key mentoring concepts, steps to building a mentoring relationship, and tips for successful mentoring. This is designed to be used with the facilitator's guide by facilitators, as well as workshop participants.
• Mentoring for Youth Advocacy Workshop Powerpoint - to be used by facilitators in a workshop setting.

The tool was developed and shaped through two pilot workshops that took place in 2015 in Kampala, Uganda (in partnership with Uganda Network of Young People Living With HIV (UNYPA), Uganda Youth Coalition on Adolescent SRHR and HIV (CYSRA - Uganda)) and in Yangon, Myanmar (in partnership with the International HIV/AIDS Alliance Myanmar and Myanmar Youth Stars). Much of the content was developed by youth advocates themselves during and after these workshops.
Link Up is a SRHR-focused project working with 10-24 year olds most affected by HIV in Bangladesh, Burundi, Ethiopia, Myanmar, and Uganda. The project seeks to enable young people to make healthier choices regarding their sexuality and enable them to advocate for their sexual and reproductive health and rights. "The project has built a cadre of over 10,000 peer educators and youth leaders, putting them at the centre of the programme's design and delivery and in the driving seat of its advocacy work."