The LATEST. Youth Leaders project set out to address these challenges through four key objectives: 1) Develop a leadership competency model specifically designed for youth-led organisation leaders, serving both as a self-assessment tool for individual leaders and as a quality measurement framework for ÜKSA, LJP and partner umbrella organisations. 2) Create at least 6 leadership toolkits to provide practical, freely accessible resources for youth organisation leaders and facilitators. 3) Design and implement a leadership development programme in both Estonia and Latvia, built upon the developed competency model and toolkits. 4) Develop a publicly accessible web platform for wider distribution of the competency model and materials across Estonia, Latvia, and the broader European region.
Youth-led organisations in Estonia and Latvia play a vital role in developing active citizens, but have faced increasing leadership quality challenges in recent years. Leaders in these organisations typically serve for one year or less – a reality that makes traditional leadership development programmes inadequate. The pandemic years of 2020–2022 further deepened this challenge: most organisations had to suspend or significantly scale back their activities, leading to a gap in leadership continuity and competency development. Üliõpilaskonna Sihtasutus, which manages the OLE ROHKEM. network of 60 student organisations in Tartu, Estonia, and Latvijas Jaunatnes Padome (LJP), the National Youth Council of Latvia representing 47 member organisations, both observed similar trends across their networks: new leaders lacked the same competencies as their predecessors, and there were no high-quality, freely available leadership development tools specifically designed for youth-led organisations. Existing tools, such as the Vabaühenduste Liidu juhi competency model, were designed for professional nonprofits with stable, long-term paid staff and not the rapidly changing, volunteer-driven environment of youth associations.