For 27 years, CHOICE has been ensuring young people are meaningfully included in decisions that affect their bodies and lives. Run by youth, for youth, we began as a small volunteer initiative and transformed into a professional international organisation with a strong national and international reputation.

CHOICE has achieved so much! From establishing official youth mechanisms at the UN to influencing hundreds of policies in New York and Geneva. These policies sound abstract, but they lay the groundwork for access to sexual and reproductive health, the right to bodily autonomy, and the freedom to love, live, and express ourselves safely. We’ve turned advocacy into action and tools into global movements! Take the Flower of Participation, a tool created by CHOICE. Born from the lived experiences of young people around the world, it’s now translated, adapted and used worldwide by diplomats, NGOs and other advocates to make youth leadership real.

CHOICE is not merely an organisation; it’s a haven and a catapult. CHOICE creates a workplace for young people to dream big and thrive. With youth-friendly practices, collective decision-making, and a culture of trust and care, CHOICE was where it all began, the place that lit the spark.

But today, CHOICE stands on a terrifying edge. After navigating the loss of U.S. funding due to shifting political priorities, the organisation is now at risk of losing crucial Dutch government support. This is what we face: funding seems to be re-directed to ‘other’ priorities - as if our bodies, our sexual and reproductive health and our lives are not a top priority anymore.

Is our advocacy suddenly too radical? Are our rights too uncomfortable to support? When we pull funding, we treat youth-led spaces as dispensable and silence young people’s voices. The consequences are not abstract. Dreams are put on hold. Hard-won progress is undone. Entire generations of youth leaders lose the chance to shape a better world.

Act Now: Protect Youth-Led Movements. If you can, donate please do. It doesn't matter how big or small every donation counts. With your donation we can continue to ensure that young people can make decisions about their own bodies. If you are a peer NGO, stand with us in solidarity and create space in your programming for true youth participation. If you are a donor, invest in youth-friendly processes and prioritise youth-led initiatives. If you are in government, uphold your commitments, not just in words, but in action and funding.

Let’s not look back in a few years and realise that we allowed some of the bravest, most visionary parts of our civil society to fade away at a time when the world needed them most.