The NGO Actions de développement et de protection de l’Enfant pour une citoyenneté Responsable (AER) is a non-governmental and non-profit organization (NGO) focused on children, youth and development actions. It was founded in 2004 in Niamey under the name Assistance aux Enfants de la Rue. The transition from Assistance to Street Children to the new name “Actions for the development-protection of Responsible Child-Citizenship” is motivated by the simple fact that the NGO must be part of the new so-called systemic or holistic approach adopted by the Government through the Framework Document of the Child Protection Policy in 2014. Previous interventionsby the NGO AER were carried out under the categorical approach of focusing on the child or a category of children without taking into account their environment. While the systemic approach focuses on the child’s environment, the family environment, in short, calls on several actors to provide adequate responses to the problems experienced by the child at various levels. The mission of the NGOAER is to contribute to the promotion of the culture of responsible citizenship in general and in particular to the improvement of the living conditions of children and young people in vulnerable situations, which reinforces it in this action which aims to achieve results (Strengthening citizenship and democratic values as well as respect for human rights and preventing and resolving local conflicts in a non-violent way) by focusing on category 1. Thus, the NGO AER pursues the following objectives: General objective: To contribute to the improvement of the living conditions of communities and children and young people in vulnerable situations. Specific objectives : Promote an environment that protects children and young people and is conducive to their development; To mobilize social assistance for the benefit of poor families with children in their care; To promote the culture of responsible citizenship and non-violence; To promote the integration of communities in the process of local and national development.

The project entitled “Innovative Actions for Youth Empowerment and Citizen Participation (APJ)” is largely a scaling up of the previous project carried out by the NGO AER and integrates a broader dimension relating to the empowerment of rights holders (youth). It will be implemented in the three target communes of the former project (Tillabéry, Kourtheye and Libore) to which the rural commune of Simiri should be added. The first project supported by VOICE focused on capacity building for young people, but also on advocacy for the involvement of young people in decision-making bodies. With this new project, while consolidating the previous actions, the emphasis will be on the empowerment of rights holders through the promotion of gender transformation, support for access to employment and means of production, and the fight against inequalities and exclusions at the institutional, socio-economic and political levels. This project, like the first one, is in line with the implementation of the National Youth Policy, the National Gender Strategy and the Strategy for the participation of young people in decision-making bodies. The project reflects the vision and objectives of the NGO AER and has two main axes, namely capacity building and empowerment of rights holders (young girls and boys). The slogan put forward in this project is “Learn-Act-Aid”. The project has two components, namely capacity building and empowerment