Engaging the youth

(Part 1)

RECENTLY, I was invited to speak before the Yushan forum in Taipei on the topic “Youth Leadership Through Participation and Inclusion.” I am reprinting here an abridged copy of my remarks:

For decades, public and private institutions all over the world have worked tirelessly to strengthen the ties of people. Multilateral and international organizations, non-state organizations, and even individual personalities have blurred the borders of culture, camaraderie, leadership, and even issues that affect people’s daily lives.

The common concern of human development pushes us all together towards collective action that will ensure the improvement of the lives of the people. Citizen participation is at an alltime high. Young and old, the business of human development is something we continue to embrace. This is why it is important that we continue to look forward to the future and prepare young leaders who will build on what we have done, innovate on what we have built, and create even more opportunities for participation and development.

It is in this spirit that I wish to share with you my ideas on cultivating youth leadership, the areas we should continuously explore and harness, and the challenges we must grapple with if we are to truly empower the youth of today.

We live in an even more complex world. The world contends with diverse issues of terrorism and extremism, climate change and other environmental concerns, sustainable human development, transnational crimes, migration, poverty, and many more. Issues have become transnational in nature, seemingly unconfined within one’s physical borders.

What happens in Europe and in North America has the potential of affecting countries in Asia. Globalization has shrunk borders and deepened interdependence among countries but it has also, in many ways, increased risks and threats for many.

But we also live in an exceptionally connected world where governance is no longer the sole domain of governments, where private endeavors – collective and individual – hugely impact people’s lives. Issues may be transnational, but so is help from people. The prevalent use of the Internet has decentralized information. When our country was hit by typhoon Haiyan, millions of dollars in relief and aid were sent to the Philippines – some of which were from individuals who just wanted to help after seeing the devastation in the Visayas.

Information – whether accurate or not – is readily available online. Mechanisms to communicate and network continue to increase. Platforms for both individual and collective interests abound. And the truth is, the young are able to navigate these changes faster than any generation alive today.

I am from the analog generation. We grew up reading news from periodicals or watching it on a specific time on television. We researched in libraries, through field studies. And while these mechanisms are still used today, we must acknowledge that consumption and processing of information has become drastically different with our techy generation. News is pushed in their feeds, products and information find them online. This means the ways we mobilize and organize the youth must also evolve with their changing realities.

The world our youth inhabits is vastly different from the one we knew growing up. They came of age in a digital world, where information is available on their fingertips, where communication is faster, where citizen engagement is no longer a novel concept. Several years ago, youth involvement in social issues was not as prevalent as it is today.

While gains have been achieved in including the youth in the development agenda, our models for inclusion have largely remained the same. For the longest time, youth inclusion and participation meant institutionalizing policies and developing programs that address structural hindrances on youth development. This meant ensuring that they have access to opportunities that will lead to individual progress, and creating policies that will ensure equality and rights protection and promotion.

All our efforts have led to positive changes towards youth empowerment and engagement. While there are still many issues that need to be addressed on education, employment, migration, political participation, health issues and the like, we have come a long way.

However, what is starkly different now is the young’s access to information, communications and social engagement. With the advances in technology, they have more mechanisms to acquire information, to talk to one another, to express themselves and form ideas for individual and collective development and action.

They can learn about traditional areas of learning like math, science, and languages online, in the same way they can learn about fundamentalism or where and how to buy a gun.

The possibilities for learning and entertainment are endless for them on the Internet, as well as the ways they can express themselves or come together for an advocacy. If inclusion is about ensuring our youth have access to opportunities, this deeper and pervasive connectivity has empowered them to create opportunities for themselves. In some level, it means that they are building their own communities, away from what is traditional. in a sense, the millennial generation is growing up away from the establishment.

The pressing question is, have we properly prepared and equipped our youth for this power and access they also hold today? Are our young ready to take on the challenges within their own spheres or communities they have built for themselves?

Even more important is the challenge of bringing them back into the social fold so that we develop a generation that values “we” more than “me.”