Wishful thinking…
I had in my mind in the past an image of youth leaders always fighting for the rights of youth, never stepping back. But that’s an ill-conceived image.
On March 27th, I organized a tweet chat under the #Youth2Ag hashtag, trying to figure out “why youth champions argue against youth when they get older” as someone simply said it. I started the #Youth2Ag chats in order to encourage young people to debate important topics for our generation and to inspire the wish to “change to world” in them. We’ve so far debated topics like youth unemployment or participation in high level decision making, the renewal of higher education curricula or making agriculture “cool” for young people.
On March 27th, when we were about to discuss the hottest topic so far, that of youth leaders that don’t represent youth anymore. Only one person attended the #Youth2Ag chat. Although previously we had 10 to 30 participants asking questions and commenting on the issues that we debated, this time no one seemed to be interested in the topic. I asked a few of the regular attendees why did they choose not to participate. The answer that I found most striking was “I am not interested in politics and the youth leaders in that generation didn’t represent me”.
While youth leaders argue that they need to be more involved in decision making, while we complain about the fact that we’ve been looking for a job for more than a year, some of us, the majority of youth say that they aren’t interested in politics.
Although I was planning to discuss on March 27th about youth leaders ignoring youth and what should we do about it, it seems that it’s the other way around. Youth leaders don’t lose their voices when they grow up; they don’t lose their ideals. While youth leaders represent their generation, whether it is called Generation X or the MTV generation, they always fighting for THAT generation. The youth leaders of today will indeed be the world leaders of tomorrow and they will continue to fight for the same ideals…but the ideals of my generation are not the same as the ideals of the generation before me or those that will come after me.
While those in my generation are interested in building in lobbying international organizations for sustainable development in order to create a better world, the generations to come have other objections. We must find a common point in order to achieve all objectives.
Yes…I said in the beginning “wishful thinking”. I meant by it the fact that several generation will come together to act as one. While I believe that youth should #OccupyPolitics in order to have a say in what`s being decided regarding their future, some consider that the status quo (social media campaigns, iNGOs etc.) is enough to put pressure on policy makers.
I now ask you…is it enough to ensure a fair future for all?
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