The Open Society Foundations Youth Initiative works to identify, inspire, empower, and learn from a network of young, active citizens promoting open society ideals.

The Youth Initiative’s main office is in New York, but staff also work in Bishkek, Budapest, Kampala, Kiev, and London.  Programs include Global Debates, which challenges universities to engage young people in policy issues critical to their future.  The initiative also supports debate programs in over 50 countries, with a particular focus on the Middle East and North Africa, China and Southeast Asia, Latin America, sub-Saharan Africa, and Central Asia.

The Youth Initiative works with its spin-off organization, the International Debate Education Association (IDEA), to support international debate events and to provide technical assistance to local NGOs.  Events include an annual summer Debate Institute, as well as the International Youth Forum.  In addition, the initiative supports the IDEA website, www.idebate.org, which offers extensive resources for debaters, information on international debate events, and a social network for debaters to interact with each other globally.  

The initiative supports the Youth Action Fund, a small grants program to fund youth-designed and youth-run projects in Estonia, Kyrgyzstan, Latvia, Lithuania, Moldova, Nepal, Serbia, Thailand, and Uganda.

Additionally, the Youth Initiative promotes young people as partners in all aspects of the work of the Open Society Foundations. Along with the Open Society Media Program and five local Open Society foundations, the initiative has developed a media literacy curriculum to engage young people in critical discussions of how they perceive and use the media.  And as part of a broader effort to raise awareness of how  public policy affects young people, the initiative gave seed funding for www.youthpolicy.org, an online community and resource center on international youth policy.

Other projects have included training for young photojournalists who accompanied an installation from the Open Society Documentary Photography Project that traveled through the Middle East and North Africa; an international barcamp in Turkey that brought together Open Society programs, foundations, grantees, and young activists to share their work on web communities for marginalized youth, young people in closed societies, and national youth policies; and a conference in Nairobi for African youth with disabilities.