The youth are understudied in Sri Lanka and their needs have never been addressed by mainstream policies. The objectives of this study are to understand the challenges faced by Sri Lankan Tamil youth, particularly those that lead to poverty; to identify mechanisms from own perspectives for youth participation that include economic, political, social and cultural aspects; to identify the coping strategies of Tamil youth in the context of poverty and to find tools to strengthen their existing coping strategies; to find out how far the conflict in the North and East has had an impact on the Tamil youth in leading them to poverty; and finally, to identify the mechanisms that exclude the Tail youth from mainstream development because of their ethnic, regional and caste backgrounds.