Youth taking over the United Nations!
WASHINGTON, DC, 15th to 19th April 2013 – The Youth Advocacy Group for the United Nations’ Global Education First Initiative met for a series of events related to a 1,000 days countdown to the target-date for Millennium Development Goals.The Youth Advocacy Group (YAG) is a central structure in the Global Education First Initiative – UN Secretary General’s global initiative on Education – for bringing in the voices and perspectives of young people. In the lead up to the Learning for All Ministerial – co-hosted by the United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, President of the World Bank Group Jim Yong Kim, and UN Special Envoy for Global Education Gordon Brown – members of the Youth Advocacy Group shared their expertise on panels, debates and meetings with some of the World’s greatest stakeholders in education. Dejan Bojanic, Board Member of OBESSU and a member of the Youth Advocacy Group, used this opportunity to represent the stances of European school students and call policy makers for a higher involvement of young people in all the coming processes aiming to meet the Millennium Development Goals.
Meetings, meetings, meetings
In order to learn from each other’s perspectives and ideas on what quality education means, and especially to get informed about each other’s ongoing and the upcoming plans to ensure a high quality education globally, the Youth Advocacy Group members had many meetings with their fellow-actors in the global education arena coming from some of the World’s most notable youth and education organisations and institutions. The heated discussions at the meeting demonstrated a great interest to work as partners and give support to common fields of advocacy. Some of the meetings were with the following organisations : UNESCO, UNICEF, Brookings Institution, Global Partnership for Education, Global Campaign for Education – United States Chapter, Save the Children US and many more. Furthermore, the Alliance for International Development and the Centre for Universal Education at Brookings organised a reception for YAG members where the group presented their work and caused excitement in the audience to get to know the group members and their work, and establish cooperation. The Group also took time to improve their structure, e.g. through a fund-raising training held with representatives of MacArthur and Firelight Foundation.
Finally, one of many interesting meeting was the one with students from Washington DC high schools where we got to learn about their secondary education systems, the advantages’, the shortcomings and the ways they can be improved.
UN Education Envoy’s panels
Under a framework of the UN Global Education First initiative, the UN Special Envoy for Education organised a series of panels where different players in education commit to the ways they can contribute to ensuring a quality education for every child in the globe. Some of the topics of the panels were child slavery, gender equality, early marriage, and many more, and each had a representative of youth as a panellist: a member of the YAG. Our Board member Dejan Bojanic presented what young people can do, bearing in mind that we most often are not in the position to make policy changes as we are usually not involved as equal partners in decision making processes. He stated that we, young people, are very much willing to contribute with our ideas and to mobilise our networks to make sure that young people are aware of the problems and have the information needed to face them. Furthermore, our advocacy work will still involve a lobby for more opportunities for professional development of teachers, knowing that quality of teaching is one of the most important within-school factors influencing learners’ performance.
Youth Call for Action
In the crowd of over 150 representatives of some of the World’s most influential educational stakeholders, the Youth Advocacy Group members called for action to ensure that young people are included in the decision-making processes of global education debates.
“Now that we are few days short of 1,000 days to realizing our goal, we are making it clear that we as well are investing all our time, resources and power to ensure meeting this goal. We have been monitoring the outcomes of the discussions in the past days and you will be held accountable, because our progress depends solely on everyone’s willingness and ability to commit to what they said they would.”, YAG members claimed.
#UNYouthTakeover
To build on the momentum garnered during the week of events and to rally a youth movement advocating for education, YAG members also announced that on 12 July there will be a Youth Takeover of the United Nations, involving young people around the world to demonstrate their commitment to putting education first. On this day – also a birthday of Malala Yousafzai, an activist from Pakistan who was shot by the Taliban for advocating for girls’ right to education – the Youth Advocacy Group members, together with Malala herself, the UN Envoy for Youth Ahmad Alhindawi, the UN’s Secretary General Ban Ki-moon and over a thousand young people – will launch a document that will summarize various consultations on how do young people see post-2015 development agenda. This event that will take part in New York, United States, is titled UN Youth Takeover and indeed, youth is finally starting to be treated as partners and we will make sure that upcoming United Nations initiatives of education do involve young people as much as possible.
Written by Dejan Bojanic, OBESSU Board Member
