About

Youth and Community Development formerly Nkhotakota Youth Organisation was founded in November 1997. The organization was founded by a group of concerned youth who, at the time, were deeply displeased with the perpetual legacy of marginalization of young people and women in mainstreaming development policy and practice in Malawi and Nkhotakota District in particular. With the emergence of a robust civil society, particularly subsequent to democratisation of Malawi’s political system, the distraught but resolute youth capitalized on the changing status quo and formed an organization whose mandate was to provide space for youth activism, promote youth and women’s role and visibility in local development and help in the fight against emerging health problems such as HIV/AIDS

What Makes Us Different

YouthCode is a local community based Non-governmental organization committed to advancing socio-economic empowerment, digital inclusion, vocational skills development, gender equality, environmentally sustainable, and sexual and reproductive health services.

YouthCode has targeted children, youth and women as its key target groups.

Malawi is a youthful nation. According to the 2018 Census Report, 50% of Malawi’s 17,563,749 population are youth aged 10-35.

The youth in Malawi are still grappling with myriad of challenges that impedes on their growth and development. Youth are still excluded from many national and local governance structures and where they are represented, they do not have a strong voice to influence the course of decisions on crucial policy and development issues affecting them. In the economic empowerment space, youth continue facing limited market experience, lack of relevant skills, high cost of investment, limited business support services and limited employment opportunities.

Youth in the Malawi continues to experience limited access to SRHR and mental health services. These have resulted into rising cases of alcohol and substance abuse, HIV and STI infections, early and unintended pregnancies, child marriages, unsafe abortions and gender-based violence among the youth.

Malawi remains one of the world’s least developed countries, over 70 per cent of the population live below the income poverty line and approximately 63 per cent of children live in poverty. Child marriage remains high with 46.7 per cent of girls married before the age of 18 and Malawi’s pre-term birth rate is the highest in the world, at 13 per cent. Malawi’s rapidly increasing population is putting pressure on the government to scale up services in social services, including education.