From commitments to action: Youth-led pathways to women’s economic justice – Lessons from the Economic Justice and Rights Action Coalition Small Grants initiative

The Economic Justice and Rights (EJR) Action Coalition launched the Youth Small Grants initiative as a strategic response to persistent gaps faced by youth-led organizations, including limited access to flexible, catalytic funding to advance their commitments under the Generation Equality Forum. With financial support from the Government of Germany, the initiative enabled eight youth-led organizations to undertake policy, advocacy, and programmatic activities aligned with EJR priorities while strengthening their institutional capacity, increasing the economic participation of young women, and enhancing community engagement. Most notably, the eight projects provided valuable lessons on adaptive, locally grounded programming, fostering policy and advocacy objectives that have significantly contributed to implementing the four EJR blueprints:

• decent work
• care economy
• productive resources
• gender-transformative economies

Thereby, the projects advanced the overall Global Acceleration Plan of Generation Equality. The successful rollout has also enabled the consolidation of knowledge and evidence for future scale-up. This publication has been developed to capture the achievements, challenges, and best practices emerging from the initiative, centring youth leadership and transformative action, and contributing to broader learning within Generation Equality to inform future investments in youth-led economic justice programming.