How today’s youth can be global citizens
Like many Canadians of my generation, I consider myself a global citizen. I am the daughter of immigrants. I was born in B.C. I spent some of my childhood in Ghana. I went to university in Toronto. I am not unique. A 2017 Research Now survey of young people in their 20s and 30s across 15 countries, including Canada, revealed nearly 60 per cent see themselves as global citizens.
The world we are inheriting is a troubled one.
While we are increasingly bound by the shared challenges we face — from climate change to income inequality to gender-based violence — how we experience these challenges, and our capacity to confront them, vary wildly depending on where you live.
I am calling on my fellow Canadians, particularly those of my generation, to step up and don the responsibility of global citizenship.
Right now, I am volunteering with Crossroads International in a girls’ empowerment program in Ghana. I can tell you the #MeToo movement means something very different to women my age in Ghana than it does in Canada. In Ghana 1-in-3 women experience sexual abuse. The child marriage rate is 29 per cent. Societal attitudes toward women are, from a Canadian perspective, outdated. Such attitudes can have dangerous consequences.
This is a plague spread throughout the global south. Consider the Tanzanian president recently declared women who use birth control “lazy” and almost in the next breath vowed to ban girls who become pregnant from attending school. Burkina Faso has a 52 per cent child marriage; in eSwatini (formerly known as Swaziland), 31 per cent of women are living with HIV.
The volunteering work I am engaged in with Crossroads is not only empowering for the young women in the clubs, it is empowering for me. I am engaging as a global citizen. Citizenship proffers rights and demands responsibilities.
While my generation may be posting about the issues we care about on social media, we can do more. According to Statistics Canada, those of us aged 20 to 34 are both less likely to volunteer and put in the same number of hours as our fellow citizens.
Volunteering overseas is not the only means of taking direct action, but it is an instructive one, particularly if we approach it with knowledge that we have both skills to share and skills to learn.
My own path to service was inspired by author Lawrence Hill, a fellow Crossroader whose award-winning book Book of Negroes was inspired in part by his volunteer experience with Crossroads. I am also a storyteller; my camera is my instrument. I was motivated to help tell the stories, or rather, help young women in Ghana tell their own stories through photography as a community educational tool. These are stories that must be told.
In the empowerment clubs I look on with awe as young women, not much younger than me, demonstrate their commitment and creativity to change the contexts in which they live. I wish all young Canadians had the opportunity to witness the transformation these girls and women fight through, from victims of violence to voices for change.
It is a privilege to observe such constructive change up close, and it accentuates the feelings of responsibility I hold to do my part in tackling the problems that threaten humanity, especially the most vulnerable among us.
With my colleagues and the girls we serve in Ghana I am seeking solutions. The potential for the global mobilization of young people to share their ideas, experiences, passion, and skills to contribute to building a better world, a better future, for all of us, inspires me.
I sincerely hope young Canadians answer this call to volunteer for the causes that inspire them, in the communities where they wish to make a difference.
My next volunteer assignment is already mapped out: back to Ghana to work with women on building their capacity to participate in decisionmaking on all levels, including climate change legislation.
What will your action be?