Chiara Wülser
By 2050 two-thirds of all humans will be urban, a fact why the SDG Goal 11 is already nowadays so important. To achieve sustainable cities and communities there must be changes and investments in various sectors: public transport, safety, poverty, affordable housing, recycling and waste management, green public spaces – to cut it short society needs to cope with readjustment. [1] But where do we start readjusting? How about empowering and involving the youngest in our society to achieve our goals?
Introduction
Maybe you think know, empowering youth and have even more “Fridays for future”? No thanks.
No, that’s not what I’m referring to. But as a matter of fact, the youth of today are the future population of this planet. Additionally, they are most affected by what today’s decisions and actions of other generations or entire countries will have in the future. Furthermore, since two-thirds of all humans will live in cities by 2050, the education of the youth now is even more important. [1]
Supplementary, youth is currently the major generation on Earth and will grow even further in the future. And the growth will especially take place in countries with high potential or even backlog demand for more sustainability.[2]
Figure 83.1 – Youth aged 15 -24 by region, 1950-2060
It may be that they’re a generation with less technical knowledge, general know-how or life experience, but they’re the learning population and still have time to learn and readjust for a better future. They are in the process of understanding how our world, our society works or how they could change it. Since learning means reading, hearing and seeing, it can take place at home, in school, from social media or in social gatherings. [3]
Reasons to involve youth
First, being young involves making own experiences and asking questions to learn about the world around you. Youth have a critical thinking. That includes analysing, integrating and evaluating and that they use to decide whether someone’s opinions, ideas or wisdom is fair and right. [3]
With that they can identify and challenge existing structures and barriers to change, by exposing contradictions and biases. [5]
Secondly, young people have the power to act but even more important to mobilise others with their passion and believes. Youth activism is on the rise, not only in Europe but across the globe. They have, also due to social media, a broader connectivity than prior generations. They can bring people together and inspire them to join a movement.[5]
A third reason to involve youth is their innovation. They bring not only fresh perspectives, but often have knowledge and insights into issues that are not accessible in the same way to adults. The generation that faces the problem, can often offer new ideas and alternative solutions.[5]
Finally, one of the most important reasons to empower youth are the benefits our society and the youth themselves receive. They are capacitated with knowledge and develop leadership skills. This will help them to change their communities and countries. [5]
As a result of this, young people are given a chance to act for their own future. Furthermore, it’s proven that programs that empower youth or are developed in partnership with youth are more likely to be effective at engaging in population. In programs developed with youth it’s essential that adults and young people are open to the ideas which will come up and to share a unified vison for the partnership. [6]
Already existing examples on how to involve youth
Top to Top – a global climate expedition
Dario Schwörer is a swiss climatologist and international ski- and mountain guide. Due to his profession, he experienced the fragile environment he’s working in and decided to dedicate his life to educating society on how to respect nature and protect it for future generations. Joined by his wife Sabine, and through the years by his kids, they founded TOPtoTOP. The goal of this expedition was to be the first to connect all climates in traversing the seven seas and reaching the highest peaks on every continent. And all this relying only on the power of nature and the human spirit, as why they choose to travel by sailboat. Along their journey they have made presentations on climate changes to more than 100’000 students and have visited more than 100 countries.
They’re message is to give the children an understanding of how the world works and how to prevent its beauty. Since studies indicated that explorative learning is one of the most effective, they encourage this in their lessons. Additionally, they make measurements for different universities and do research in social and ecological sectors all over the world while travelling.[7]
Due to the recent Corona situation they created ADVENTURE, to unify children all over the world. With this tool, children can select a social or ecological problem, that the Schwörer family is recently doing research for, to help find solutions.[8]
YMCA/YWCA Colombia
Paza La Paz – or in English: one step to peace is the slogan of the YMCA Colombia, an organisation that engages youth to learn healthy, self-determined and peaceful lifestyles. To achieve this, they are mostly active in economically less fortunate quarters, where the youth is most exposed to the aftermath of the war between government, guerrilla and other criminal organisations. Even though there are contracts for peace since 2016 the safety situation hasn’t changed much for the population. The vision of YMCA Colombia, that is supported by Horyzon and 74 other institutions, is to give the Ex-Guerrillas and also other young people an alternative way how to live, instead of violence and war. They want to prevent that young people accompany armed groups or are forcibly recruited.
To achieve this, they started to teach young people out of less fortunate social classes, who will then start their own group as a leader and try to impart their knowledge to the other members of the group. Annually 180 young people are skilled to be a leader, 1’500 young people are part of these 75 groups existing and they are active in 7 cities of Colombia.[9]
Decent jobs for youth – green jobs for youth
Decent jobs for youth is an organisation that engages itself for the youth employment challenge and brings together numerous partners. Globally 68 million young woman and men are looking for a job, and 123 million are working but still live in poverty and finally 270 million are not in employment, education or training.
The organisation aims to tackle this challenge all over the world and on the same time to help countries achieve a Sustainable Development. [10]
Due to this they have different projects, one of them is focussing on green jobs for youth since there is a potential for creating up to 60 million jobs in green economy by 2030. To realise this and to give young people an opportunity to work for a better future, there are several actions they’re focussing on. Action on the global level includes amplifying global youth discussions on green jobs and encouraging impactful online and media exchanges. On the national level three actions take place: Identifying market constraints to unleash job creation in the green economy, stimulating youth-focused employment-intensive green growth and fostering demand-driven skills development in the green economy.[10]
Conclusion
As you can see, there are already examples on how to involve youth into readjusting society. For sure there are more organisations and institutions who work with youth, not only for sustainable cities but also for other SDG goals. For example there are further YMCA groups around the world, who engage young people to stand up for their rights, to help them get a good education, a peaceful lifestyle and a lot more.
In schools and universities in Europe sustainability is already an important topic nowadays, but there could be done more to engage the youth and help them to change the system they live in. And around the globe there is even more potential to involve the youth. Youth engagement for sustainable issues, whether in cities or in the country, can be addressed in different ways. The examples show that both individuals and organisations can be successful. They differ in the approach, but their commitment and belief in a more sustainable future is the same. And it is the hope for improvement and the fighting spirit to stand up for it, that should be maintained and passed on to younger generations.
References
[2] https://www.un.org/esa/socdev/documents/youth/fact-sheets/YouthPOP.pdf
[3] https://www.tigweb.org/youth-media/panorama/article.html?ContentID=11385
[4] https://freechild.org/critical-thinking/
[5] https://plan-international.org/blog/2015/08/five-reasons-success-sdgs-depends-youth-engagement
[7] https://toptotop.org/about/our-climate-mission/
[8] https://adventure.ch/de/2020/03/22/about/
[10] https://www.decentjobsforyouth.org/theme/green-jobs-for-youth#WHY,
Figures
https://www.un.org/esa/socdev/documents/youth/fact-sheets/YouthPOP.pdf
Media Attributions
- Figure2