Youth are integral in any development process at national, regional or international level. Whilst everyone has the right to development, environmental sustainability, sound resource management, and freedom from poverty and dependency, there exists various challenges in making these rights a reality for young people.

Among the challenges include exclusion from decision making processes, inadequate support to youth innovative ideas that have the potential of creating employment and limited technical capacity that compromises their ability to tap into existing opportunities.

World leaders on the 27th of September 2015 during the United Nations Sustainable Development Summit pledged common action within a broad universal policy agenda of the Sustainable Development Goals(SDGs). Implementation of these goals requires unpacking of the agenda and contextualizing it to fit national circumstance.

The Sustainable Development Goals provide a new global agenda to end poverty and pursue a sustainable future. They set pace for an era of national action and international cooperation with the ambition to tackle poverty, increase economic growth, meet people’s health, education and social needs while protecting the environment. Importantly, they provide opportunity to address the diverse challenges that youth face.   

It is within the context of the SDGs that the Youth 4 SDGs Kenya was founded on the 5^th of October 2017 during a national workshop on ‘Integrating the Youth in the Implementation of Sustainable Development Goals and Paris Agreement regime’. The platform will provide an opportunity to the Kenyan and African youth to spearhead innovative solutions to the challenges they face within national, regional and international contexts.