A deficit in public spending on young people’s development
should be plugged by new and innovative forms of financing
including the promotion of social entrepreneurship,
according to Commonwealth youth leaders.
More than 150 young people - from Africa, Asia, the
Caribbean and Americas, Europe and the Pacific - attended
this week’s Youth Leaders Forum, part of the
Commonwealth Youth Ministers Meeting in Kampala.
In a joint declaration issued today, the young people make
plain their concern about the “ever increasing burden” they
face with widening health and social inequalities,
unemployment and lack of access to finance and quality
education. They also call for governments to equip young
people with the skills to adapt to the digital economy and
disruptive technologies.
“Young people across the Commonwealth are growing up in
a world where digital skills, social media, mobile technology
and online communities are fundamental to the way that
they communicate, learn and develop,” they said. “Disruptive technologies and automation are changing the
face of virtually every industry and guaranteeing that the
future will not be business as usual.”
In their statement, the young people identify a “critical
need” to diversify sources of funding for youth
development, including through public-private partnerships,
promoting social enterprises and seeking out philanthropic
donors.
To increase access to finance and support youth-led social
enterprises, a Commonwealth Youth Development Bank is
proposed to provide loans to young entrepreneurs. In
addition, the delegates recommend strengthening national
regulations on corporate social responsibility to ensure a
percentage of company profits go to youth schemes.
The Youth Leaders Forum was organised by the
Commonwealth Youth Council and Uganda’s National Youth
Council, in conjunction with the Commonwealth Secretariat
and the Government of Uganda. Among the
recommendations is a call for governments to support the
professionalisation of youth workers and to provide
adequate funding for national youth councils.
Kishva Ambigapathy, Chair of the Commonwealth Youth
Council, said: “It has been an exciting few days, meeting
with fellow youth leaders from across the Commonwealth to
have an intellectual discourse on advancing the agenda of
resourcing and financing youth development. We have
identified the challenges, and now we are devising
solutions. We hope governments acknowledge that to
realise the solutions we will need partnerships with all
stakeholders – the private sector, philanthropy, civil society
and young people.”
Alongside the Youth Leaders Forum there was also a
Stakeholders Forum which brought together 130 youth
workers, youth activists, and representatives of civil society,
academia, development agencies and donors. It was
organised by the Commonwealth Alliance of Youth Worker
Associations and the Uganda Parliamentary Forum on Youth
Affairs.
In their own communique, the stakeholders recommend
that governments pursue “a policy environment which is
responsive, flexible and enabling to assist in empowering
young people to actively engage society’s development and
enhancement in a meaningful way”.
The stakeholders follow the lead of the youth leaders as
they state that other “sources or methods of financing be
made an urgent priority.” They recommend public-private
partnerships be pursued to fund youth development and
urge greater support for youth-led community projects and
businesses.
Since the last Commonwealth Youth Ministers Meeting in
Papua New Guinea in 2013, world leaders at the United
Nations agreed the Sustainable Development Goals, a set of
17 global targets including poverty reduction, health,
education, gender equality and climate action. In their
communique the youth leaders state that the SDGs
represent “an extraordinary opportunity for young people
to shape a future they believe in and can truly call theirs”.
Both the stakeholders and youth leaders raise concerns
about inequality and discrimination and the needs of
marginalised and disenfranchised groups, as well as the
imperative for government departments to collect and
analyse data to develop evidence-based youth policies.
One of the delegates, Karuna Rana, Coordinator of the
Commonwealth Youth Climate Network (CYCN), said: “Young
people are working really hard to advance the sustainable
development mandate of our governments. Young people
are also often working voluntarily to advance these causes.
Investing in young people will provide them with more
resources to do much more.”
Another delegate, Bernard Takyi, Regional Coordinator of
the Commonwealth Alliance of Young Entrepreneurs - West
Africa (CAYE-WA), said: “Governments and stakeholders
should invest in youth to empower them economically to
make them financially stable and to help them become job
creators for other young people.”
Achaleke Christian Leke, Global Coordinator of the
Commonwealth Youth Peace Ambassadors Network
(CYPAN), said: “Young people should work as partners with
governments. We are the change that the world needs. We
need to harness the positive youth energy and make our
world a better and a peaceful place.”
The communiques from the Youth Leaders Forum and the
Stakeholders Forum will be presented to youth ministers on
the final day of the 9th Commonwealth Youth Ministers
Meeting. Source: Commonwealth
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