Since we are mainly committed to the 6Es of the Decade Campaign, I want to
talk about the concept of "Youth Empowerment". I have read, collected data
and finally put the essence of the issue in the following few lines.
It is us the YOUTH who can change our tomorrow and build our world." As the
youth empowerment was
one of our six E's and was added by Dr. Ismail Serageldin at the Alexandria
summit to the main 5 E's [In fact the sixth E was added by Mr. Jose-Maria
Figueres - Moderator]. And it is one of our bases for the YES campaign and
in our framework of action, I am sending u the definition of youth
empowerment and what is it exactly.
Youth Empowerment
Defining empowerment:
The concept of youth empowerment sprang from the need to enable young
people
to have a say in decisions which affect them and to have lowed and heard
Voices. In their communiqué, Commonwealth Youth Ministers considered that
"pursuing the objective of youth empowerment gave young people the
economic,
social, and cultural advancement of their families and countries and to
gain
self-fulfillment"
Youth empowerment has two dimensions:
Young people are empowered when they acknowledge that they have or can
create choices in life, are aware of implications of those choices, make an
informed decision freely, take action based on that decision and accept
responsibility for the consequences of that action.
Empowering young people means creating and supporting the enabling
Conditions under which young people can act on their own behalf, and on
their own terms, rather than at the direction of others. These enabling
conditions fall into four broad categories: an economic and social base;
political will, adequate resource allocation and supportive legal and
administrative frameworks; a stable environment of equality, peace and
democracy; and access to knowledge, information and skills, and appositive
value system.
Rationale for youth empowerment
The empowerment of young people is everybody's business and involves the
concerted efforts of a number of key stakeholders, including governments,
intergovernmental and non-governmental organizations, the media,
educational
and other intuitions, the private sector, family, kinship and community
networks, youth peer groups and, above all, young people themselves.
Youth empowerment is based on the belief that young people are themselves
the best resource for promoting their development and that they must be
both
architects and agents in meeting the challenges and solving the problem
faced in today's world and in the new millennium.
Youth development work has in the past been and in many cases still is
centered on a social welfare approach. This views young people as
presenting
problems which need to be solved through the intervention of old people.
This approach is limited, perceiving young people as passive objects upon
which interventions must act, rather than as active subjects participating
in the shaping of their lives and communities. It tends to be based on a
range of negative assumption about young people that they are, at best,
unable to take care of them selves and , at worst, responsible for crime
and
violence. This view tends to perpetuate the very problems it seeks to
solve.
An awareness of the limitations of the welfare approach led, in the 1980s,
to the emergence of the participation approach, which has various
interpretations, ranging from mere consultation listening to people's
opinions to give them an active role in decision making processes on issues
that affect their lives.
Abdallah Diwan
YES Country Network Egypt
Media Team Leader
Sustainable Development Association (SDA)
abdallahdiwan@hotmail.com
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