MSU’s Global Youth Advancement Network (GYAN) serves as a coordinating platform for research and international development activities related to the education, entrepreneurship, mentoring, and leadership training of youth between the ages of 18 and 35.

View our 2019 Progress Report

According to the United Nations, young people aged from 15 to 24 years currently account for 16% of the world's population and by 2030 it is estimated that this number will reach nearly 1.3 billion. One of the greatest challenges facing these young people is unemployment; efforts to support youth employability must dramatically increase and evolve to keep up with this rapid population growth.

GYAN believes that young people are the catalyst for positive change in the world. In collaboration with other units within MSU’s International Studies and Programs and external stakeholders, GYAN is increasing MSU’s global engagement and building on the university’s land-grant values to address young people’s aspirations for sustainable global prosperity. By empowering global youth and amplifying their voices and ideas, GYAN hopes to foster and advance youth-led innovative solutions which have the potential of improving the livelihood of millions of people worldwide.

Convening Thought Leaders

GYAN convenes young professionals, MSU faculty, staff, and various partner institutions to exchange ideas and disseminate new knowledge. This is done in a number of ways, including collaborative student-led research and outreach projects, seminars, panels, workshops, case studies, and comparative studies of interventions that are successfully addressing the world's most intractable problems. GYAN’s initiatives use multidisciplinary methods and are often led by youth moderators, entrepreneurs, and/or ambassadors to better promote youth leadership networks and youth-to-youth dialogue.

Capacity Building

Activities in this area occur on multiple levels across all GYAN projects, including aspects such as youth mentoring, collaborative research between MSU faculty and local organizations, technical training of local government, NGOs, and private sector partners through our institutional capacity building programs, and the coordination and implementation of livelihood activities with these stakeholders.

Content Development

GYAN works closely with faculty and researchers from a diverse range of academic disciplines to develop educational content that is not only culturally relevant and appropriate to the language, literacy, and local realities of target communities, but also reflects state-of-the-art pedagogy thus including participatory, multimedia, and blended learning approaches and delivery mechanisms. Content developed through this initiative is designed to be used by local educators, governments, private sector partners, and civil society organizations as tools to improve youth-related policies and increase youth access to life skills, vocational training, employment, and entrepreneurship opportunities.