Since 2006, a coalition of local, regional, and international organizations has been promoting positive masculine identities under the banner of the Young Men Initiative (YMI). YMI is a regional program built upon CARE’s comprehensive and programmatic effort to fight interpersonal and gender based violence (GBV), as well as improve gender equality in the region and address preventative measures related to youth extremism and violence. The program is being implemented in municipalities and high schools in Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH), Croatia, Kosovo*1, and Serbia. The heart of YMI is “Program Y” (youth), which focuses on transforming the school environment into one that promotes gender equality and a culture of non-violence. The core of Program Y’s intervention is a series of group educational workshops accompanied by social norms campaigns that promote a
critical and personal reflection on gender, masculinities, and health, with a strong focus on violence prevention. The objective of the impact study is to discover the changes that occurred in implementation sites in terms of the
perceptions, attitudes, and behaviors of young people in the period from 2014 until 2020 in key program areas: (1) gender attitudes; (2) violence prevention; (3) sexual and reproductive health; (4) alcohol and drug abuse; and (5) the prevention of sexual violence, as a result of the direct engagement of CARE and its partners. The study also aims to identify which methods and approaches