The objectives listed below all serve the key goal of improving the overall sustainability and stability of the participating organisations through addressing the three key areas: 1. Leaders Transition, 2. Institutional knowledge/memory, and 3.Long-term strategy. The goal is to incorporate tools and best practices from both the youth work sector and the drug policy/harm reduction sector to develop and implement a Framework that addresses these issues. This Framework will also be shared and utilised across the sector to allow the benefits of this Framework to be shared on a wider scale and ensure a sustained and stable youth drug policy sector. Objectives: Implement new processes to improve leadership transitions in the participating organisations Implement new processes to improve institutional knowledge and memory in the participating organisations Implement new processes to improve the development and implementation of the long-term strategy
Youth-led organisations in the drug policy and harm reduction sector suffer from a range of capacity issues. The key issues we have identified are 1. Poor Leadership Transitions, 2. Poor Institutional Knowledge/Memory, and 3. Lack of Long-Term Strategy. These issues are a direct result of regular leadership changes, which is a defining characteristic of youth-led organisations. Furthermore, the participating organisations have a large number of young people who use drugs in their membership and leadership, this population faces additional barriers in regards to barriers to education and learning due to stigma, discrimination, arrests/prosecutions, and barriers to accessing support and care that enables them to apply themselves in this sector in a sustainable manner. Alongside this, youth-led organisations in this sector rarely engage with the broader youth sector and have limited knowledge of youth work as a practice. As a result of these issues, the organisations in question struggle to maintain steady and consistent success and growth. For community- and youth-led organisations to develop and be successful, these issues need to be addressed.