When privilege trumps compassion and decency

 xx has been feeling a little frustrated. Normally every year, she and her family head out to Europe from Sri Lanka for the summer vacation. However due to covid 19 lockdowns she was unable to travel in 2020. 2021 was also looking like a washout until things seemed to open up with the vaccinations in Sri Lanka and In Europe. It seems vaccinated people will be let into some parts of Europe with minial quarantine needed. When the vaccination process started in Sri Lanka in about May, xxx was able to use her family contacts with government ministers and be one of the first to be vaccinated even before it was rolled out to front line workers. Now it seems that xxx and her family can get that summer holiday in the uk after all, by heading to Serbia for 10 days before making it to their final destination of the uk. Flights are expensive and the whole trip is triple what has been spent before but in xxx’s mind its worth it as they haven’t been abroad since 2019.

Yyy’s son is getting married. The wedding was delayed from 2020 with the covid lockdowns so he is determined do it this year. Coming from a large family and with this wedding being the first in the family, he is determined to make sure it works. Given the Sri Lankan authorities have put a 150 person limit on weddings, he decides to have three events scattered in three different hotels to ensure he is able to have the guests. As inter provincial travel is prohibited he decides to have a bigger function at his village as he is able to travel because he has a pass based on his work. Because it is a rural area, the requirements for physical distancing and event numbers are not strictly followed and so he is able to have a 1000 people attend the wedding.

Now these stories might seem far from reality, but the sad fact is that they happened in Sri Lanka and I personally know these people. And I am shocked. Not because life should cease because of the pandemic. But somehow there is a tone deaf disconnect from a reality; a reality where daily wage earners are suffering from a drop in work and income; a reality where people with no connections or influence have been queueing for hours to get vaccinated; where people are struggling to make ends meet; where they are not able to get access to private medical care or oxygen.

What shocks and saddens me is that somehow these two anecdotes (which was normal in times before covid) seems to be continuing during times of covid as if things hadn’t changed. The sadness comes from the fact that there seems to be an oblivious (in the case of xxx) and a callous (in the sense of yyy) disregard of people and their lived experience. In the sense of the former, it is just a disregard that not everyone is able to afford holidays or even think about the money to be spent. For the latter there is a callousness of irresponsibility: an irresponsibility of putting people in the rural areas who are not vaccinated at risk from the disease; an irresponsibility of putting people who attended the weddings at risk, the waiters and everyone. The irresponsibility is made worse by the utter selfishness that somehow, doing weddings is more important than saving people’s lives or keeping people safe. This selfishness that despite people suffering economically, we are able to go on ‘as normal’, has been there but somehow become more magnified during covid.

This selfishness comes from a position of privilege and power that hitertho had existed but seems to have been made worse by COVID 10 which has exacerbated inequalities and vulnerabilities. What we are seeing through these anecdotes is that whilst people have been all affected by the lockdowns, the effect of these lockdowns have varied and some have been more affected than others. Yet in that, there is still a lesson that has not been learnt and that is of compassion and the wish to treat others as you wish to be treated. Power and privilege seems to trump compassion and we have seen that. Compassion has not been there when people have looked for vaccinations and tried to compete for that. Compassion is not there when large weddings are conducted putting unvaccinated and vaccinated people at risk; compassion is not there when people choose to continue their holidays and lives oblivious of the others suffering.

Sadly this is the reality we live in and as the anecdotes I have shared have shown, privilege trumps compassion and decency. If we need to learn from what covid has taught us about the fragility of life and the interconnectedness of us all, we will have to trump privilege.

This was originally posted here

Locally Driven Youth Action is the Need of the Hour

 This year’s International Youth Day feels a bit subdued and overwhelming because the scale of the problems to overcome have some how become even greater. It is well documented that COVID 19 has exacerbated existing inequalities across the world with respect to access to resources, information and power dynamics, and, disproportionately affected millions of children and young people worldwide, with public health restrictions and socio-economic disruptions having a devastating impact on their education, mental health, career prospects, safety and personal development. The uncertainty and fear for what the future holds is very real and is the new norm.

Due to the lockdowns, children and young people (with girls and young women in particular) have been affected, missing out on education with those without digital access and a suitable home learning environment being particularly disadvantaged. Many young people who have been in temporary or informal jobs, and in sectors worst affected by the pandemic are now suffering high levels of unemployment and future job insecurity. Lockdowns have seen an increase in gender-based and interpersonal violence and more children are living in unsafe homes with reduced access to support. This has caused even more stress on young people as research carried out by World Vision has shown that school disruption, emotional distress due to social distancing and increasing poverty have had tremendous impacts on the lives of children and young people on a massive scale. These have long term repercussions not only for young people but for communities and governments who have the responsibility to look after the interests of youth.

Despite all these challenges, young people all over the world are and have been providing support to one another and their communities in need. For those working with young people,they are considered a resource with scope and scale, and their meaningful engagement is key to building not only more resilient, adaptive, and non-violent communities, but resilient institutions too. From work done by youth organisations on the ground, we know that the untold story of Covid is of young people as the solution, not the problem. At the end of last year, a Global Youth Mobilization initiative was launched by the global Big 6 youth organisations to highlight and promote young people, their ideas, and their innovative solutions to the impact of Covid and the many community challenges that have come with it. Projects being supported by the initiative have included youth-run programmes across countries and communities addressing mental and physical health, mitigating the impact of disruption to education, training in digital skills, improving employability through support to livelihoods and financial literacy, vocational training and skills provision, vaccine awareness and other forms of Covid-19 prevention. So, what these projects show is that given a platform, agency and inter-generational accompaniment, young people can become partners in providing solutions.

On International Youth Day questions are asked as to how youth engagement can be strengthened to make use of the opportunity to overcome the covid 19 challenges. A new discussion paper released by the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) for international youth day aims to situate this debate around young people and COVID-19. It aims to contribute to a more holistic and intersectional understanding of the impact the COVID-19 pandemic has had and will have on the constituency of children,adolescents, and young adults. By placing the constituency of children, adolescents, and young adults at the centre, this discussion paper chooses to challenge thematic and programmatic silos that usually govern humanitarian and development aid. By focusing on the challenges faced by young people because of COVID-19, the discussion paper calls for transformative recommendations to scale up the engagement of young people not only as members of affected communities but to engage them within the institutions as well. Thus,there is a need to strengthen institutional capabilities to address obstacles to elevate well-being and protection. By meaningfully engaging with a youth constituency, institutions can address fractures in today’s fragmented and divided world where fear and xenophobia can flare up.

It is now, more than ever that we can see the power and agency young people have despite the challenges they face. The current pandemic will have a lasting impact on the youth of the world, which is why this is the time to take action to ensure young people are driving change rather than being impacted by it negatively. Policy makers must listen to children and young people and put them, their views, needs and experiences at the heart of the solutions. A healthy, vibrant, and further strengthened youth sector is vital to ensure that young people thrive and overcome the challenges of the future with the support of those around them. This starts at the local level with young people from local communities being given agency and taking responsibility for solving problems at their community.

Young people will help us bring humanity together, build bridges over the deep valleys of division and help us to start living in a world, where saving just one life matter. Recognition of their unique role, trust and power sharing, commitment and accountability, and action with impact are the critical ingredients of collective success and continuity.
This originally appeared here

The power of sports and life skills

 Sport is a unique and efficient tool to build resilience and enhance social inclusion of the economically, socially, and politically marginalised youth in today’s age.

Youth in crisis

15% of the world’s population – some 1.2 billion people and counting – are aged between 15 to 29. The COVID-19 lockdown has disproportionately affected people’s lives, especially millions of young people worldwide, with public health restrictions and socio-economic disruptions having a devastating impact on their education, mental health, career prospects, safety, and personal development. The pandemic has further highlighted and exacerbated the existing inequalities in our societies, with respect to access to resources, information, and power dynamics.

This has also exacerbated existing fractures in society that has led to the frightening rise in extremism, isolation, and fear. Added to this is an unprecedented 70.8 million people around the world who have been forcibly displaced from their home. Among them are nearly 25.9 million refugees, over half of whom are under the age of 18. COVID-19 is quickly pushing us to a situation where we are losing our commitment to welcome the stranger, provide for the most vulnerable and cross lines of difference to solve shared problems.

As the world’s largest and oldest humanitarian network that is also a member of the world’s six largest youth organisations (the Big 6), collectively reaching 250 million people every year, the IFRC (International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies) and its 7.5 miilion youth volunteers and young changemakers are aware of the burning desire for young people to be heard, seen, and engaged in finding solutions to the world's biggest challenges. 

Using sport for development approaches to harness the talent of youth

Young people across the globe have ideas on how to solve the world’s most entrenched problems, but they are too often dismissed as victims or “the future.” Too few youths have access to the tools, mentors, and resources to turn their insights into reality. There are few safe spaces that really enable them to get engaged and co-create their engagement.

Youth engagement and participation is needed in promoting peace and preventing violent extremism. The UN Security Council Resolution 2250 on ‘Youth, Peace and Security’ recognises the important role that young people play in the prevention and resolution of conflict. The resolution creates a framework for the engagement of young people in tackling violent extremism and working for peace through participation, protection, and prevention.

Sport programs are often used as tools of crime prevention or to build social bridges. Consequently, sport programs can be seen as vital to prevent violent extremism or build peace, as it can with nurturing core life skills in young at-risk people – such as confidence, self-esteem, self-discipline and self-control, teamwork, breaking down cultural stereotypes – which are transferable to other contexts such as conflict avoidance, but are more effective when associated with other activities, such as education, training, employment, volunteering, etc. Much more work needs to be done though in this area.

The last two decades have seen a rapid increase in the use of sport for development and peace (SDP). Yet the closure of the UN Office for Sports for Development and Peace in 2017 has created a global vacuum of a reference point that provides thought leadership, raise awareness and developing tools for the use of sports and physical activity in the advancement of peace and development objectives. 

IFRC’s contribution to youth development through S4D

The Red Cross Red Crescent Movement has long recognised the potential of sport for development and peace – for example in 2011, the IFRC and the IOC proposed a pledge signed by 57 National Societies endorsing the potential of sport for value-based education seeing sports as a key tool for the innovative promotion of values education.

A scoping study done in 2013 by the IFRC has emphasised on the role of sports in bringing values to life and making them accessible for many human beings in a very authentic, and sustainable way whilst offering chances for intergenerational discussions. In addition, IFRC and the Asian Football Federation have signed an MOU to advance work on social development causes whilst the IFRC and Special Olympics have been working together for the last 6 years.  Many National Societies and the ICRC have used sport for different purposes, mostly in a social inclusion context, and some (e.g. Danish Red Cross, supporting Bangladesh RC) in a humanitarian context, again often linked with psycho-social support.

In addressing the current challenges to do with youth isolation, exclusion, and violence prevention, the IFRC is spearheading a new project in partnership with The Supreme Committee for Delivery & Legacy of Qatar 2022 (SC) – Generation Amazing (GA). The project is a unique hybrid of football for development skills (F4D) and Youth as Agents of Behavioural Change (YABC).

F4D is GA’s flagship program that empowers and educates future generations around the globe to address three priority issues-vulnerability, health and wellbeing, and environmental sustainability. YABC is the IFRC’s flagship initiative on the promotion of a culture of non-violence and peace (CNV+P), that empowers young people to take up an ethical leadership role in inspiring a positive transformation of mindsets, attitudes, and behaviors, both within themselves and their communities. It is built on three pillars – empowerment, operating from inner peace, and reaching out to the community.

The new YABC/F4D project – uniting through the power of football – consists of a hybrid curriculum that has been developed to combine the (Y)ABC methodology and F4D approaches to use football as a driver for social change. It focuses on developing youth leadership and a social entrepreneurship spirit to mobilize vulnerable young people and communities in out-of-school activities can help prevent the occurrence of violence, improve their access to education and employment, ensure better social inclusion and build resilience in excluded at-risk communities, leading to healthy lifestyles, greater engagement, fewer problems with peers, and increased pro-social behaviour.

Through the project, young people will not only experience personal transformation, but create an external ripple of change. As they navigate their leadership journey, they will learn powerful skills around discipline, healthy living, teamwork, and engage with their local networks in meaningful ways. By doing so, they will create change in their schools, neighbourhoods and the broader world by implementing solutions to some of the most challenging problems of our time from a community-based lens and with the initiator of this being the F4D methodology, combined with YABC approach and additional basic educational processes. The project will involve thousands of young people in this process and will in turn create thousands of solutions directly implemented by young people.

The project is currently being trialed with Red Cross Red Crescent National Societies in Argentina, Uganda, Myanmar and Iraq, testing outcomes identified in the multi-country project design to assess the effectiveness and impact of combining the IFRC’s (Youth as) Agents of Behavioural Change and GA’s Football for Development (F4D) initiatives. 

With the onset of COVID-19 lockdowns, much of the hybrid curriculum has had to be adopted for the online space with IFRC YABC trainers. As the project unfolds, it expects to have an impact on the improvement in the social inclusion of marginalized and excluded youth, particularly those living in at-risk communities, refugees, and internally displaced young people, as well as in host communities, by recruiting disadvantaged youth to participate in football driven leadership development programmes.

The programme puts forward a community-based model of resilience using team sports to address issues of identity and cultural isolation. It aims to prove that with the provision of life and leadership development skills, as well as learning opportunities to vulnerable and excluded community-based young people through an integrated F4D and (Y)ABC skills training programme, enhancement of local capabilities will help young people drive social change on the ground and take responsibility for those actions. This will ultimately lead to an enhanced well-being and personal resilience of vulnerable youth.

Paving the path to youth leadership

IFRC and GA believe that young people represent the single greatest untapped resource for good across the globe. They are ready to change the world. Through this project, both partners want to show that sport and life skills will equip this generation of young people with the necessary skills and mindset to change the world for the better –not someday in the future –right now. They are hungry to lead and imagine innovative approaches to make their communities healthier, safer, and more inclusive, while writing new narratives of who they are and what they are capable of.  

this originally appeared here on Sport and Dev