Youth Impact

Youth Impact is a grassroots, youth-led, evidence-based movement based in Gaborone, Botswana. We identify, adapt and scale-up health and education programs proven to work, by young people for young people. Since 2014, we have reached over 100,000 young people in Africa. Our mission is to connect youth to proven life-changing information. Zones, our flagship HIV prevention program, addresses the critical need to halt the spread of HIV from older men to young girls. The program encourages youth to safely date age-mates instead of riskier older partners. Zones was inspired by a 1-hour class delivered in government schools in Kenya and shown to reduce unprotected sex and HIV -- also a proxy for unprotected sex and HIV -- by 28% in one year through a randomized control trial. The program is delivered by peer educators in schools and is realistic, simple, scalable, high-impact and backed by rigorous evidence. In 2017, we expanded our portfolio of programs to incorporate a remedial ed...