Program · Capacity strengthening
GenGen: organizations where young people participate and decide
The Gender and Generational Approach process accompanies organizations in Honduras, El Salvador, Guatemala and Nicaragua that work for the rights of children, adolescents and youth.
Why it exists
Many organizations work "for" young people, but few work "with" them
Central America has no shortage of organizations serving children, adolescents and youth — in education, health, violence prevention, migration or civic participation. Yet their structures often reproduce two biases that limit their own impact.
The first is adult-centrism: adults decide what young people need, how they are spoken to, and in which spaces they may give an opinion — almost always in a consultative, non-binding way. The second is an incomplete gender approach, one that recognizes inequalities between women and men but leaves out young people of diverse sexual orientations and gender identities, or treats youth as a homogeneous block.
GenGen was created to work on both at once. The generational approach recognizes that age, like gender, is a power relation: it organizes who speaks, who decides and who is believed. Changing that relation inside organizations is the condition for their outward-facing programs to be consistent with what they preach.
How we work
Regional training and one-on-one accompaniment
GenGen combines regional training meetings with individualized accompaniment for each organization: reviewing internal policies, transforming adult-centered practices, adapting tools beyond the gender binary, and opening real —not decorative— spaces for youth participation in decision-making.
Each organization leaves the process with a plan tailored to its country and digital follow-up instruments to measure its own changes.
The accompaniment cycle has four moments:
- Participatory diagnosis: adults and young people from the organization jointly review its bylaws, policies, decision-making routines and language, and agree on what they want to change.
- Regional training: meetings with organizations from the four countries to share conceptual frameworks on gender, generation and intersectionality, and learn from each other's experience.
- One-on-one accompaniment: working sessions with each organization to draft or reform policies, design youth participation mechanisms with decision-making power, and adapt their working tools.
- Digitalized follow-up: each organization measures its progress with its own online instruments, which feed Puntos de Encuentro's monitoring system.
First half of 2026
Results of the process
Source: institutional report, first half of 2026 · Tools adapted beyond the gender binary · Digitalized follow-up instruments
What changes
What an organization takes away from GenGen
- Internal policies reviewed with a gender and generational lens: safeguarding, participation, communication and decision-making.
- Youth participation spaces with voice and vote — not merely consultative — built into the organization's structure.
- Working tools (forms, diagnostics, educational materials) adapted to include young people of diverse sexual orientations and gender identities.
- A change plan tailored to its country, with its own indicators and a digital instrument to measure them.
- A regional network of peer organizations in Honduras, El Salvador, Guatemala and Nicaragua to keep learning with.
GenGen is implemented in the region by Asociación Puntos de Encuentro, with more than three decades of experience in communication for social change and organizational strengthening. Fundación Puntos de Encuentro Inc. channels support from donors in the United States to sustain the full accompaniment cycle. If your organization works with young people in Central America and wants to join a future cycle, write to info@fundacionpuntosdeencuentroinc.org.
GenGen on video
Capacity strengthening with a gender approach
Short video of the process (in Spanish). It opens on YouTube.
Add your thread
Changing an organization's culture takes time
Your gift sustains accompaniment through the whole cycle, not just the opening workshop.
Fundación Puntos de Encuentro Inc. is a 501(c)(3) organization. Your donation is tax-deductible in the United States.