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

Celebrating International Youth Day amidst COVID-19 — The Resilience of Young People

 This year’s International Youth Day is historic. For the first time, it will be commemorated largely virtually as the COVID-19 pandemic has led to stricter physical distancing. It is also the first one this century where the world collectively is at a crossroads for the future and where the world collectively has to take a step forward. Whilst International Youth Day is often used as a stepping stone to reaffirm commitments towards engaging young people, it would be remiss not to use this opportunity to understand and reimagine what a post pandemic youth engagement can and should look like.

COVID-19 is a time to reimagine what post pandemic youth engagement can look like

COVID-19 has now impacted almost every country in the world, heavily affecting communities at all levels of society. While all are impacted, millions of young people worldwide have been, and continue to be, disproportionately affected by the pandemic and the associated crisis. The pandemic and public health restrictions are having severe effects on their mental health, career prospects and personal development with many young people facing increased levels of interpersonal violence.

Almost 1.2 billion learners (69% of all those enrolled worldwide) are currently out-of-school as a result of the country-wide and localized closures of educational institutions forced by the Covid-19. This adds up to the hundreds of millions of young people that were already out-of-school prior to the pandemic (and who therefore even more risk being left out). Such educational disruptions, even temporary, have serious repercussions on the lives and well-being of young people (and their families), especially for those who:

• have fewer opportunities for growth and development outside of the formal educational setting

• rely on free or discounted meals provided at schools for food and healthy nutrition

• have parents with limited education and resources who may particularly struggle to facilitate or support distance learning and home schooling (when put in place)

• lack access to technology or good internet connectivity which may prevent or limit educational continuity through digital learning portals during times of compulsory confinement

• are left alone at home by working parents who have no other choice for them to be looked after, which can lead to additional anxiety, psychological distress or mental health issues, risks of exposure to violence (e.g., (online) sexual exploitation and abuse, cyberbullying) and negative coping mechanisms (e.g., substance misuse/abuse, self-harm, depression, suicide)

We know (partly from the evidence and lessons learnt out of Ebola outbreaks) that prolonged closures of educational institutions often:

• increase drop-out rates, in particular among adolescent girls (who generally take on a heavier part of the burden of household chores, support with child care, etc., may be exploited, married or pregnant)

• further entrench gender gaps in education (in particular when harsh socio-economic conditions make families favour the education of boys over girls — despite research showing higher socio-economic return for the family out of girls’ education compared to that of boys on the long run)

• lead to increased protection risks (e.g., trafficking, sexual exploitation and abuse, early pregnancy, early and forced marriage, child labour, recruitment by armed groups)

• pose a serious threat in terms of malnutrition and health more broadly speaking (especially for families relying on school feeding programmes or health care services offered at schools).

So, if this year we are not mindful of what young people globally are going through currently, then we lose the essence of what the day should be about and what we can do about it

The pandemic has once again reminded us that local communities are the backbone of society.

All over the world COVID-19 has challenged people in local communities to think and act differently. We have been reminded of the existing deep inequalities in our societies, with respect to access to resources, information, digital connectivity, and power dynamics around marginalisation, including institutional racism. The pandemic has caused most activities to shift online blurring the lines between personal and professional whilst increasing the need for online safety and security.

Consequently, we have noticed an inspiring and moving engagement of young people in volunteering activities, self-organising, supporting their communities during these hours of need often in the absence of state. As COVID-19 has shown, young people have — and will continue to have — a valuable role in the global response to and recovery from the COVID19 pandemic.

As COVID-19 has shown, young people have — and will continue to have — a valuable role in the global response to and recovery from the COVID19 pandemic.

Young people are agents for peace, engaged in transforming the structures and institutions that hinder the socio- economic and political well-being of people. They are often first responders and disproportionately affected by disasters taking a long time to build back better. Through volunteering and engagement, young people lift the spirits of communities and light the world with their actions. As volunteers, young people are bearers of hope and compassion, willing to make their contribution to society and effecting change through moral influence.

So this International Youth Day our reflections are not only on celebrating the contributions of young people but on understanding from the experience of COVID-19 how we can mobilise young people to act quickly and together to address these key issues. There has to be a collective commitment to collaborate, innovate, and to support local communities to provide hope to many young people. Now more than ever young people need to be included and embedded in processes taking place now, not as token representation but with agency and influence.

A lot must be done to ensure that we get the full engagement and investment. This is not only the responsibility of the youth to push for this as they inherit the problems that we create but also our collective responsibility to ensure that we do not hand something that we would not want to inherit.

So, we need to do more to invest and engage with them, but this requires a holistic approach. We need to remove the prejudice that many of us have when it comes to engaging young people. We must stop thinking that they are apolitical — more interested in following the latest instalment of a reality TV programme than in engaging with the serious questions of the world around them. We should channel their enthusiasm to express and get involved. However, we must be honest about this approach. We need to give them the space to be innovative and shape or rethink new models for the communities and societies in which they live — maybe outside the globalised economic and “social” system that they will inherit from their elders and previous generations. In doing this, we must answer some hard questions about whether we are ready for that and what it will take for each one of us to work together towards a fairer world for all of us. In short, we have to be prepared for a hard shift in how we work and engage.

we have to be prepared for a hard shift in how we work and engage.

Uncertainty and fear for the future is the ‘new normal’ for many young people. It is not enough for youth to be ‘represented’ but they must be mainstreamed, included, nurtured, listened to, consulted, and worked with in partnership with.

This is the call that is most loud and one we need to support. These are the lessons from COVID-19, and this is the call for International Youth Day 2020.

This originally appeared on Medium

A Holistic Approach For Youth To Build Peace

he youth demographic is on the rise. We cannot ignore the case in many parts of the world that the majority of the society is under 30. The youth are not just the future as the cliché goes, they are the present. This means that they need to be included and embedded in processes taking place now, not as token representations but with agency and influence. And it's not like they do not want that engagement.

The recent Varkey Foundation study is testament to this urgency. It exudes cautious optimism about the attitudes and opinions of the generation that will shape the next few decades. Despite the rise of populist movements which focusses on differences, the survey paints young people as wanting to bridge differences. The survey also points to young people having a greater commitment to doing something to contribute to their societies and their world. There is anger in our youth, impatient with the lack of progress being made on tackling this and also frustrated by being shut out. Surveys like this help to make the case for not only recognising the role of young people but also doing something about being part of the change. This is important as we consider the state of the world.

For all the relative calmness and progress of the second half of the 20th Century and the early years of the 21st, we still see a world that is hurting due to increased fragility - fragility that is globalising at the pace of our fast-evolving world.

Figures show that the world has become less peaceful since 2008, largely attributed to the rise of conflicts within states, the rise of terrorism, and increasing levels of criminality. The battlefields of today are everywhere: they are not defined by geography; they are not places like Verdun and Waterloo and Solferino. The battlefields of today are on our streets, in our hospitals, in our schools, in our places of worship. There may not be a World War, yet we are still a world at war.

So in the lead up to International Youth Day this year on 12th August with its theme 'Youth Building Peace', it is important we re-dedicate efforts once again to seeing how youth are part of and take the lead in building peace. Young people are agents for peace, engaged in transforming the structures and institutions that hinder the socio- economic and political well-being of people living in fragile and conflict affected communities as pointed out by a recent report on the role of young people in peacebuilding. They are often first responders and disproportionately affected by conflict taking a long time to build back better.

So, we need to do more to invest and engage with them but this requires a holistic approach. First though, we need to remove the prejudice that many of us have when it comes to engaging young people. We must stop thinking that they are apolitical - more interested in following the latest instalment of a reality TV programme than in engaging with the serious questions of the world around them. We should channel their enthusiasm to express and get involved. However we must be honest about this approach. We need to give them the space to be innovative and shape or rethink new models for the communities and societies in which they live - maybe outside the globalised economic and "social" system that they will inherit from their elders and previous generations. In doing this, we have to answer some hard questions about whether we are ready for that and what it will take for each one of us to work together towards a fairer world for all of us. In short we have to be prepared for a hard shift in how we work and engage.

In December 2015, the United Nations Security Council recognized the efforts of young people with a unanimous vote on UN Security Council Resolution 2250 on Youth, Peace and Security (UNSCR 2250). UNSCR 2250 sets guidelines for its member states, the UN and civil society to ensure young people's active, systematic and meaningful participation in institutions and mechanisms relating to peace and security.

However like many things, the devil is in the detail as well as in the will to get this participation.

A lot has to be done to ensure that we get the full engagement and investment. This is not only the responsibility of the youth to push for this as they inherit the problems that we create but also our collective responsibility to ensure that we do not hand something that we would not want to inherit.

Youth can no longer be 'represented' but have to be mainstreamed, included, nurtured, listened to, consulted and worked with in partnership with. This is the call that is most loud and one we need to support.

So this youth day, its not just about reaffirming the need for youth to build peace but to find avenues and opportunities to make this happen.

This originally appeared on Huffington Post