Access to free quality health care and education services is crucial in breaking the cycle of poverty, ending inequality, and in supporting young people to fulfil their potential and transform their communities. 

However, many developing countries are not on course to meet the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) relating to universal education, child healthcare, HIV and AIDS, or maternal mortality. Not only are the basic needs of children and young people often not met, these diverse groups are rarely listened to, often manipulated, and disenfranchised as legitimate rights-holders.

The My Rights, My Voice programme will deliver a holistic and contextualised vision of children's and young people's rights to health and education services. It is being implemented in eight countries, with each project adapting activities and focus depending on the specific condition and experiences of children and youth in these states.

Project overview

My Rights, My Voice is a global initiative that will run until 2014. It aims to engage marginalised children and youth, especially girls and young women, as active citizens in their rights to health and education services.

The programme has a number of key objectives:

• To increase children and youth's awareness of their rights to health and education services.
• To strengthen their and allies' skills and capacity to claim these rights.
• To facilitate opportunities for children and youth to engage with duty bearers (e.g. health and education ministries, teaching and medical professionals, religious leaders) which lead to specific actions delivering better health and education services.
• To strengthen Oxfam and our partners' capacity to work on youth agency and for our global campaigning force to facilitate youth claiming and accessing better health and education.

The programme is being implemented in eight countries: Mali, Niger, Tanzania, Georgia, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Nepal and Vietnam

Funding

The My Rights, My Voice global programme is funded by the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (Sida).