Since its establishment APFFHECOD has been focused on preparing young people to be productive and engaged economic actors and citizens. As we know from experience, varied forms of marginalization have a direct impact on their agency, voice, economic opportunity and other life outcomes. Equipping all staff, volunteers and beneficiaries to transform their lives necessarily involves addressing the barriers to inclusion that make it challenging for them to thrive.

APFFHECOD considers all types of exclusion based on sex, gender identity and expression, sexual orientation, race, religion, ethnicity, income status, educational status, disability, family structure, living situation, marital status, geography and many other factors at play in young people’s contexts. We recognize the intersectionality that exists for many marginalized communities and the impact such social categorizations have to their livelihoods.

APFFHECOD is committed to taking a systems approach to address the institutionalized oppression that promotes discrimination and disadvantage. Gender and Social Inclusion (GESI) policy reflects APFFHECOD’s strong commitment to improving gender equality and social equity through its interventions. Moreover, it links to and reinforces APFFHECOD existing policies on child protection, anti-harassment, and anti-discrimination. This policy is accompanied by implementation guidelines, processes, tools, and trainings that address how, when, where, and by whom the policy will be implemented. For example, it provides tools to use for social inclusion analyses, minimum requirements for these analyses, and guidance for those who are accountable for ensuring that these analyses are conducted and that findings are integrated into designs and implementation.

Definitions Equal Access: All staff, volunteers and beneficiaries of APFFHECOD, regardless of demographic backgrounds, has the same opportunities to benefit from an intervention. For example, a life skills program takes steps to ensure that young people with and without disabilities have equal access to training sessions. Equitable Outcomes: To the maximum extent possible, all staff, volunteers and beneficiaries have similar outcomes from an intervention. Programs will carefully examine the particular needs of all staff, volunteers and beneficiaries and will make the appropriate accommodations to ensure that the intervention supports positive outcomes for all staff, volunteers and beneficiaries in the intervention. For example, a life skills program could measure learning gains for participants through the training cycle. If women from a majority ethnic group seem to have significantly higher learning gains than others in the program, the project team examines and addresses the barriers that are preventing all staff, volunteers and beneficiaries with other backgrounds from achieving similar learning outcomes. APFFHECOD has established a Diversity and Inclusion (D&I) Committee to promote gender equity and social inclusion in all its internal and external work. The structure of the Committee is divided by 5 areas of focus.

The five pillars are:

1. Programs: support the design and implementation of projects and program development.
2. Internal Practice and Policy: focuses on assisting the human resource function in developing and implementing policies and practices that promote diversity and inclusion among all staff, volunteers and beneficiaries.
3. Professional Development: Supports the development of trainings and learning opportunities to increase cultural competency.
4. Organizational Culture: Gives all staff, volunteers and beneficiaries a platform to share their diverse experiences through celebrations and other inclusive activities.
5. Communications: oversees the diversity and inclusion aspects of all internal and external communication efforts.

Our Principles
As part of its APFFHECOD strategy, APFFHECOD identified grounding principles, each of which have relevance for supporting gender equity and social inclusion:

• Positive youth development: APFFHECOD engages all staff, volunteers and beneficiaries as partners along with their families, communities, and/or governments so youth are empowered to reach their full potential. Positive Youth Development approaches build skills, assets, and competencies, foster healthy inclusion.
• Relationships: Strengthen the environment around youth; and transform systems. APFFHECOD sees addressing GESI in all four domains as critical to achieving long-lasting outcomes.
• Evidence-Based Learning: APFFHECOD is committed to using evidence and knowledge to inform programs and achieve results that improve the lives of all youth. High quality data captured through APFFHECOD s measurement, evaluation, research, and learning systems advance learning and promote effective solutions across the sector. Institutional data collection and disaggregation requirements allow APFFHECOD to monitor and evaluate program effectiveness for distinct populations.
• Social Inclusion: APFFHECOD is committed to addressing the specific needs of distinct populations, including young women and men, ethnic or racial minorities, youth that identify vulnerable and disabled youth, among others. Projects should seek to benefit all youth equally.
• Local Ownership: APFFHECOD programs are grounded in the local context, led by local partners and supported by APFFHECOD locally led staff in the communities where it works. This policy prioritizes the expertise of local partners and staff in appropriately contextualizing GESI measures to make sure APFFHECOD programs do no harm in the pursuit of more equitable outcomes.
• Partnership: Partnership is at the core of APFFHECOD model. Serving as a connector and convener, APFFHECOD forges alliances with corporations, employers, local organizations, governments, communities, youth and other stakeholders to create the best solutions to specific challenges. The implementation of this policy will happen with and through global and local partners, who are best equipped to identify and address barriers to GESI in their contexts.
• Ecosystems: Recognizing that changes in GESI require addressing knowledge, attitudes, and behaviors at individual and systemic levels, APFFHECOD creates systemic change, impacting youth at scale by enabling them to influence the systems that affect them the most.
• GESI in Program Design and Business Development: APFFHECOD project design and proposal preparation must conduct inclusion analyses in the early stages of development. The analysis will inform the design of interventions, including all activities, staffing, budget, and indicators. The goal during the design phase is to ensure, at a minimum, that all staff, volunteers and beneficiaries —regardless of sex, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, disability, race, ethnicity, religious affiliation or other factor of marginalization—has equal access to APFFHECOD interventions. Moreover, this must be so whether interventions are carried out through direct delivery, all staff, volunteers and beneficiaries, local partners, consultants, grantees or sub grantees.

Projects should pursue equity in outcomes for all beneficiary groups to the maximum extent that funding, time, context and other factors allow. This means that all staff, volunteers and beneficiaries from various demographic groups, broken down at a minimum by age, sex/gender, identity, disability status, and race/ethnicity, derive roughly equal outcomes and benefits from the intervention. When possible, projects should strive to transform environments to improve equity and inclusion in the context in which the project takes place. The degree of change will be based upon available budget, timeline, context, and many other factors. This may involve addressing social norms, beliefs, attitudes, practices, policies, procedures, or other elements within institutions or groups with which all staff, volunteers and beneficiaries come into contact through equal access, equitable outcomes and awareness, sensitive and transformative programs. All new project designs must consider and mitigate possible unintentional harmful effects of interventions on young people that participate in, or interact with, the project. This risk analysis is part of the inclusion analyses tools and methods provided to APFFHECOD staff and should take place at the same time as the initial inclusion analyses. In addition, it is important to consider the potential risks and harms of GESI-related activities APFFHECOD program and business development teams are encouraged to educate partners and donors about the importance of gender equity and social inclusion, including best practices for design, staffing and budgeting.

Data Collection, Monitoring and Evaluation: Demographic factors important for inclusion must be integrated into project-specific indicators, including the minimum collection of disaggregated data by age, sex/gender identity, race/ethnicity, disability status and geography at the individual beneficiary level. In cases where collecting data based on any demographic characteristic is extremely sensitive, unallowable or may put all staff, volunteers and beneficiaries at risk, projects will consult with heads to create a plan for collecting as much demographic data on all staff, volunteers and beneficiaries as is appropriate and safe. All staff, volunteers and beneficiaries should always self-report and have the right to refuse to participate or respond to certain questions.
Training and Capacity Building: All staff is required to complete basic training on gender equity and social inclusion within their first 90 days of employment. Current employees will have 90 days from the launch of training for completion. A notification of completion will be sent to Human Resources.
Measuring Progress: APFFHECOD measures its commitment to addressing gender equity and social inclusion through the full implementation of this policy by:

• Sharing implementation guidance, tools and training on an ongoing basis with all staff. Each quarter the number and percentage of new staff that has completed required training is reported as part of APFFHECOD Balanced Scorecard.
• Monitoring the differences and gaps between demographic groups listed above across the project life cycle and regularly reporting these results during quarterly performance reviews.
• Presenting a breakdown of the strategic plan indicators by age, gender identity, disability status and race/ethnicity. All institutional level indicators will report changes that improve or erode equity and inclusion. This level of reporting will be included in all presentations on Strategy performance indicators, including the Balanced Scorecard.
• Reporting to all staff on the levels of inclusion integration in proposals, new awards and implementation of new projects (both number and percentage). All staff, volunteers and beneficiaries.