OUR VISION
All young people have the opportunity to transform their local communities to build an equitable, just and sustainable world.
WHO?
The Oaktree Youth Solidarity Fund (OYSF) is a fund by young people, for young people.
- The OYSF was founded on the principle of youth-youth solidarity, creating a movement of youth-led organisations and young people across the Asia-Pacific region to build a better world.
- The OYSF funds diverse community based youth-led organisations.
- In the Asia-Pacific region, there are approximately one billion young people aged 10-24 years, accounting for over 60% of young people worldwide.
Members of Oaktree’s Youth Solidarity Fund are provided with:
1. Untied flexible funding of up to USD $10,000 over the grant period.
2. Access to the OYSF Network: a group of young leaders from youth-led organisations, groups & grassroots movements.
3. The opportunity to build solidarity and connect with other Members through mutually beneficial knowledge sharing, collaboration and technical training activities.
The OYSF accepts applications from all across the Asia–Pacific region due to its high proportion of young people, including countries such as: Indonesia, Tonga, Timor-Leste, Cambodia, Fiji, Pacific Islands, Philippines, Brunei, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Malaysia.
Many countries in the Asia-Pacific have a large population of young people while their civic systems mature. This leads to many long-term problems such as lack of education, the need to recover from intergenerational trauma of violence and loss, and accompanying cycles.
HOW?
Members are assessed based on their ability to meet the following criteria:
- Member organisations are youth-led and youth-run (youth being defined by the social context, and the organisation having a stated aim to be youth-led).
- Member organisations are community-based (focused on community development, localised, grassroots organisations).
- The member organisation has identified a problem in their local community that their proposed project/activity seeks to improve on/solve.
- Member organisations have the capacity to implement the project/activity during the funding round.
- The proposed activity contributes to broader systemic social change and allows member organisations to affect positive change in their local community or communities.
- Member organisations are diverse, and do not unfairly treat or exclude groups of people.
- Oaktree is best placed to help (and fund) the organisation based on their proposed project AND interpretation of the partnership.
- The member organisation is able to report its project/activity to Oaktree in a satisfactory manner.
The OYSF accepts applications once each calendar year, opening in February and closing late March.
The OYSF runs over the calendar year of the relevant application, but an organisations access to networking and support materials remains beyond the funding period.
WHY?
THE PROBLEM
Young people face barriers to meaningful participation in decision-making that affect our lives now, and into the future.
Too often, our leadership is undervalued, unrecognised, and untrusted, leaving us with less access to funding, and depriving us of strategy-setting and strategy-informing roles.
This reduces the power and vibrancy of movements and organisations, leaving us young people entrenched in traditional leadership styles and systems and missing out on alternative perspectives, energies and talents.
Diverse young people offer different perspectives and insights that are often ignored. They can help galvanise, energise and sustain global and local social justice movements.
THE SOLUTION
Young people who are provided with resources, leadership opportunities, and capacity support create radical transformation.
Resourcing → we resource youth-led initiatives to address the problems that young people are facing in their local communities through the OYSF.
Visibility and Influence → we increase the visibility and influence of a diverse range of youth voices by providing opportunities for young people aged 18-26 in Australia to develop core skills necessary to lead, demand and create social change.
Perception → we shift perception within the Australian international development sector to see young people as valuable contributors to policy and practice discussions.
