ActionAid’s experience of strengthening youth participation across the programme cycle in seven countries, using a specialised Youth Programming Toolkit, draws upon the organisation’s long-standing expertise in developing pioneering participatory methodologies. The Toolkit provides valuable lessons and guidance for civil society actors, donors, development practitioners and other key stakeholders with an active interest in ensuring youth are given the space and tools to be a fundamental force for development. It shows that engaging youth as equal partners, or supporting their ability to lead, can bring multiple long-term dividends within a short space of time. It can support good governance, an enhanced focus upon accountability as well as transparency, and cultivates increased ownership over development processes – not just by young people, but crucially by wider constituencies that young people are particularly effective at engaging. ActionAid has found that championing youth participation has helped to address issues of equity – young people have been instrumental and effective in reaching out to marginalised groups and supporting them to analyse and challenge the structural causes of their isolation. It highlights how in 2014, ActionAid Bangladesh, Malawi, Zambia, Myanmar, Liberia, Uganda and South Africa have applied methodologies and approaches from the Toolkit to various stages of the programme cycle, and describes the impact upon youth themselves. For Further Information contact: sarah.huxley@actionaid.org