HCA funds projects that address adolescents’ health and wellbeing priorities in the cities where they live, and empower adolescents to become agents of change.

Each project is focused on intermediary cities in the six programme countries. Projects target issues specific to local city contexts while advancing the shared programme goals and operating principles.

Projects are designed and delivered through consortia comprised of key stakeholders from different sectors including adolescents and youth, local government and civil society actors.

Since 2023, HCA-II has been trialling a new grant-making model to ensure adolescents and other local actors meaningfully shape the design of projects we fund. We provide an upfront grant to support a participatory needs assessment and co-design (NACD) process with diverse adolescents and key stakeholders in each city over a period of 6-8 months. The NACD phase informs a future (24-36 month) project proposal which may be supported with a larger grant.

Read more about NACD grants.