By Ajay Kumar Uprety, Asia & Pacific Open Fourm.
On broad topics of “Youth Leadership and Youth Engagement” the theme for this week was “Working with young people.”
With some interesting discussion on week one in the Asia and Pacific region, people were more excited to participate. They expressed this openly.
Manyu said, “Excited to be part of this in some way. Have high hopes hanging on this initiative.“
Hui said, “I hope that this translates into real action–involving young people in it. Definitely looking forward to future discussions.“
Medha said, “It feels good to be a part of this initiative, and more importantly, it seems everyone’s voice is going to be counted as it will be placed in the background portion. Thanks for providing this platform to youths.”
Young people are very proactive on what should be done for the possible scaling up of the efforts to response HIV and AIDS in the Asia and Pacific region. They think not only in a local perspective but also analyze the situation in broader global level.
While some participants raised concern about how their voices will be incorporated in the broad framework, others praised the process.
“If youths are being considered, all the measures should be youth friendly, refreshing and enjoyable too!! Use of new media like this one is quite useful,” said Medha
Some participants responded with ideas on what measure should be used to scale up the engagement.
They have expressed that young minds always come up with creative initiatives and UN agencies should consider them rather than remaining with the stiff protocols. “Youths get suffocated in stiff systems,” a participant said.
Another interesting direction the discussion took was to explore what sort of change is necessary to facilitate the process of active youth engagement.
Gurung said, “(Giving) scholarship to attend conference and inviting youth as a speakers are some of the tokensim practiced till date. However, I agree that youth from multi-sector should be included at all levels but youth/young people from key affected population must be put at the centre of the response. They should be provided all enabling environment to support their meaningful participation. Some of the possible ways can be reaching out to the youth groups working with them , youth networks, language friendly, avoiding jargon words.”
We proceeded the discussion with what could be the principles that should be keep in mind while working youth young people.
There were several inputs such as job opportunities for young people, process should be loose etc. but Aries clearly stated that “Work is not always to be a staff, work can be interpreted in partnership, involving on planning, implementing, monitoring and evaluation program or it could mean an equal partner. I think already many examples of failure of a program, its just because forgetting to include or involving young people from key affected populations.”
It seems young people are fed up with tokenistic representation, symbolic inclusion and by end marginalization in decision making table.
Enough had happen in past and this new generation will not tolerate the same, Lauren mentioned that “Ensuring that the work with young people is meaningful, no tokenistic consultations and good solid plans for their involvement throughout the process.
Some youth also have completely different views from others. People were reluctant to contribute to the discussion on drug use, sex work and some were defensive.
One of the participants said, “Youth from all countries are different, so don’t push anything you have in one country on the other.”
In summary all the young people are in line with what Lal said ”Nothing for us without us.”
It left us with a serious question: so who is responsible to involve us? What would be our step to move ahead to take the lead as young people? Share your ideas in the forum!
