Nigeria Toolkit: AYSRH Demand Generation
Intergenerational Dialogue
What is it?
Intergenerational dialogues are organized at the community level by civil society organizations (CSOs), life planning for adolescents and youth (LPAY) ambassadors, as well as the state. It is a forum that brings together two different generations – typically the older generations and millennials – to dialogue to gain a better understanding of each other with the goal to ultimately address some barriers that youth are facing related to their access to reproductive health information and services.
Why is it important?
- It helps to improve access to reproductive information and services for young people at the community level.
- Aids in overcoming cultural and religious barriers to youth’s access of reproductive health information and services
- Helps to build bridges of understanding between the two generations
What steps are taken to implement this approach?
Step 1: Identify the issues to be addressed
The barriers can be identified by a CSO or community-based organization (CBO), LPAY Ambassadors and other young people, as well as community workers including service providers. All these actors identify the various issues militating against access of young people to reproductive health information and services. As community change agents and influencers, they organize and facilitate intergenerational dialogues.
Step 2: Identify relevant stakeholders in the community who have capacity to address the issues
It is important to be strategic about who is invited to take part in the dialogue. It often helps to have multiple perspectives on the issues. For example, the perspective from a government official, religious or traditional leader, community member (parent or service provider), and youth may vary but helpful to having rich conversation.
Step 3: Identification of participants for the dialogue
Based on the purpose of the dialogue, organizers identify who should be involved/targeted groups. This helps the organizer to know the approach and the logistics for the intergenerational dialogue.
Step 4: Develop questions
Identify possible leading questions that will spark conversations. The developed questions must align with the issues identified in step one.
Step 5: Identify a facilitator
The facilitator should speak and clearly understand the local language, understand the subject matter and the diversity of the panelists.
Step 6: Select the venue
The organizers should identify a convenient venue where the target population will be free to articulate the issues (safe space for discussion). As much as possible, choose a public, community-owned space.
Step 7: Conduct an intergenerational dialogue
The facilitator starts by setting the stage and ground rules for the discussion according to the agenda. S/he introduces the panelists and informs the audience as to the purpose of the dialogue, what is the topic that will be discussed and the goal to come to some kind of greater understanding and next steps.
Each panelist speaks about the issue from their perspective and who they are representing in the community. Each panelist is given equal time to give their initial remarks and then listen to the others.
After the panelists speak, the facilitator facilitates a question and answer session among the panelists to gain further clarification and insights into each perspective as well as takes questions and comments from the audience.
As a result, a typical intergenerational dialogue takes at least 2-3 hours. This ensures sufficient time to hear the perspectives from all of the panelists and allow the opportunity for questions from the audience/community members gathered as well as allow the facilitator time to do a recap, identify action points for where there was agreement and next steps. Next steps may include plans for advocacy visits, for example.
Intervention in Action
In Niger State, for example, an outcome or next step from an intergenerational dialogue was the creation of a support group in Lapai local government area (LGA) to push the agenda of adolescent and youth reproductive health forward. This group champions the cause of AYRH within the LGA
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