Beyond allyship: why youth leadership and engagement are central to the future of the MenEngage Alliance

By Nyasha Sithole, Program Officer, Youth and Membership Engagement, MenEngage Alliance

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For years, the global social development sector has treated youth engagement as a box-ticking exercise, a nod to diversity or a panel slot reserved for visual optics. But across MenEngage Alliance, our work bridging youth strategies and membership engagement has shown us a different reality. Young people are not merely a ​“constituency group” or a demographic to be managed; they are core strategic members whose leadership is vital to the survival and evolution of our movements.

As we conclude Youth Month at MenEngage Alliance, the reality is that this imperative is existential. We are living through a profound crisis of gender equality, one marked by a surge in radicalization, online misogyny, and coordinated anti-gender movements that are actively pulling young men into militarized, violent, uncaring ideas of manhood.

Far-right and anti-gender movements frequently exploit men’s sense of disempowerment and isolation, enticing them with promises of a glorified, rigid social order. Left unchallenged, these reactionary narratives gain dangerous momentum, further entrenching opposition to gender justice. This backlash does not exist in a vacuum. It directly impacts young people’s lived realities, threatening bodily autonomy everywhere and challenging the gains made so far towards gender equality.

Young people within MenEngage Alliance are challenging this narrative and defying harmful trends through bold, grassroots resistance, digital organizing, and community-led innovation. Engaging with young people and centering youth leadership is no longer optional; it is the foundation on which the future of gender justice will be built.

The power and promise of youth leadership and engagement

In my work coordinating and walking alongside our youth leaders within MenEngage Alliance through the Youth Reference Group (YRG), I see firsthand what happens when we move beyond the comfortable label of ​“allies” and commit to structural co-creation. The YRG leaders and youth leaders within the Alliance are not waiting for permission to lead; they are actively disrupting regressive norms, pioneering digital creative tools to challenge online misogyny, and redefining what accountability looks like for young men and boys.

Whether it is confronting rising militarized masculinities in specific regional contexts, tackling technology-facilitated gender-based violence, or pushing back against state and social crackdowns on bodily autonomy, YRG leaders alongside youth members in MenEngage Alliance are leading the way. They bring an unflinching clarity to how patriarchal structures intersect with modern geopolitical, economic, and digital realities.

Regional realities and youth-steered action

Across our regional networks, the manifestations of anti-gender backlash take specific, alarming forms, ‘’men and masculinities’ are weaponised by conservative and anti-rights groups.

We are also faced with a crisis of shrinking civic space. With all this we are confronted with a reality on the roles that youth leaders can play towards building alternative futures, reclaiming civic space, and dismantling patriarchal power structures at their root.

This will require concrete institutional shifts across the Alliance:

1. Moving from Soft Sensitization to Radical Accountability: In our work with young men and boys, we must abandon superficial ​“gender-sensitization” that accommodates men’s defensiveness and discomfort when their patriarchal privilege, power, or traditional norms are challenged. True accountability requires co-creating spaces where young men actively interrogate their privilege, unlearn harmful norms, and take collective responsibility for dismantling systemic patriarchy.
2. Institutionalized Co-Governance and Resource Allocation: Tokenistic participation must be replaced by structural power-sharing. Youth leaders must be intentionally embedded in decision-making architecture, governance boards, and direct budget allocation processes, ensuring they steer programmatic priorities with real institutional backing.
3. Genuine Intergenerational Solidarity: Non-youth leaders must transition from gatekeepers to active resource-sharers, transferring political access while stepping back to let youth drive narrative-building, advocacy, and regional action.

We have a choice. We can view the current backlash and the crisis of young men’s radicalization as an insurmountable threat, or we can recognize it as an urgent mandate to transform how we organize.

By investing in the visionary leadership of our YRG and youth members and operationalizing true power-sharing across our regional networks, we can turn this moment of peril into a breakthrough. The next era of MenEngage Alliance will be defined by how boldly we trust, resource, and follow the young people who are already building a more just and equitable future.

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Nyasha Phanisa Sithole is an international development and public health consultant, Global Program Officer for Youth and Membership Engagement at the MenEngage Alliance, and a strong advocate for youth leadership and engagement through feminist principles. Grounded in years of shaping regional and global youth leadership and engagement strategies, she is dedicated to dismantling patriarchal masculinities, moving past superficial gender sensitization, and ensuring young people drive the gender justice movement.