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By Adefunke Ogunleye
The Youth-centred Participatory Action (YoPA) project in Nigeria applies systems thinking to promote healthier movement behaviours among adolescents by working with young people rather than designing interventions for them. Implemented at Ido Osun High School, Osun State, Nigeria, YoPA engaged secondary school students in mapping the factors that shape their daily physical activity, well-being, and health choices across school, family, community, environmental, and policy levels.
Using participatory systems mapping and co-creation sessions, Nigerian adolescents identified the interconnected drivers influencing their behaviours, from school timetables and infrastructure to safety, daily routines, family/home, peer norms, and institutional priorities. The goal of engaging the adolescents using the system approach is to empower them to co-create an effective intervention that is contextually appropriate. In collaboration with teachers and community stakeholders, these insights were then translated into locally tailored intervention strategies.
A key lesson from the project has been that communicating systems approaches requires adaptation. With the Nigerian adolescents, systems thinking was conveyed through reflective discussions, storytelling and lived experiences, partly in their local language. With educators and policymakers, the focus shifts toward shared responsibility, institutional alignment, and sustainability. In this way, participation itself becomes a communication tool.
Preliminary findings suggest that youth engagement enhances ownership, feasibility, and contextual fit of interventions. Moreover, applying a Context–Mechanism–Outcome lens helps unpack how and why participatory processes generate meaningful change within resource-constrained environments.
The Nigeria YoPA experience demonstrates that systems science can be both rigorous and accessible when grounded in local realities and youth agency. By translating complexity into shared understanding, the YoPA project advances participatory systems approach for sustainable adolescent health in a low- and middle-income setting.
Want to know more? Visit the YoPA Nigeria website
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