It's June already. I've been crazy busy and
deadly busy for the past months, arranging two big conferences at the same
time! The first one is "working", the second one is
"volunteering"; but both for the international organization that I am
currently working at.
Here, I only write about the second one.
"YouthTalks 2013. What's your story?". No typo
there. It's refreshing the global youth conference brand, held annually by the
Youth-to-Youth (Y2Y) Community in my office.
Before I proceed further, let me give some
background on Y2Y Community and my involvement in this group. The Y2Y Community
is a channel for young staff in my office to connect and share innovative ideas
about youth development around the world. The Steering Committee (SC) organizes
various youth-related events (most are open for public) and mentoring for
internal young staff. The SC serves for one fiscal year only (still a month to
go, but I’m effectively reducing my commitment as Finance Chair per June 1),
consists of young staff who are (crazy enough to be) willing to volunteer their
time for the aforementioned youth agendas. Yes, crazy enough to double the
existing work load. Yes, ‘volunteer’, meaning no one pays you for doing this.
Oh, and how young is ‘young’? A sensitive
issue for some and usually this is the first question asked by my colleagues.
Ha ha ha. Well, hmm, sometimes under 33, sometimes under 35… :) If you’re older than that, no worries, as long as your heart stays
young and you are very much interested in youth agendas, you are in!
OK, now back to the “YouthTalks 2013. What's your story?”. For the first session, we invited 3 awesome speakers plus 1
incredible moderator. They are the examples of those youth who are doing the
REAL thing to improve the condition of youth community out there.
- Aminata Kane. Knowing that it is not
easy for many young Senegalese (and greater African) women to find working
dress that can suit their needs and budget, Aminata established a clothing
company for this particular market. Why? It would raise their self-esteem by
being able to afford a nice dress and wearing it. The company consequently opens
job opportunity for marginalized tailors and it also empowers the workers with necessary
skills to provide the best quality of products.
- Clara Chow. After she visited Lagos
(Nigeria) and found many youth were trapped in poverty without any hope to
improve their condition, she came up with the idea of establishing a business
incubator that can bridge this poor youth community to showcase their business
ideas and eventually co-create their own business. The incubator will build and
apply marketable entrepreneurship skills, and then test the ideas to get
adequate investment.
- Fernando Barbosa. Born with an illness
which once had nearly ended his life, he realized how lucky he is to have family
who cares for him and could afford his medication. He witnessed that it is not
so for the poor and working children in his native Bolivia. He co-founded an
organization where working/street children there can empower themselves by
following series of acting/theater and entrepreneurship workshops.
- Chris Bashinelli. An excellent moderator
for this session. He was an actor of a hit TV series, but he felt that he
needed to do something greater to serve others. He flew to Tanzania and got an
inspiration where No Matter What (NMW), no matter how bad your living condition
is, you shall never lose your hope to achieve your dream.
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| YouthTalks panels |
The second session was for internal office
staff to present their youth-related projects. It's divided into several sub-sessions.
Here I include those which I think have an instant direct impact to external
societies.
1. A couple of Youth Innovation
Fund (YIF) winners illustrated their projects. YIF is an annual internal competition,
also administered by Y2Y, for those staff (team/individual) who can extend a feasible
project proposal about youth development.
- Kamil Pruchnik spoke about his Brickonomics
project that teaches economics term and how economy works to high school
students in a fun way by using Lego. Yes, that Lego toy. Hmm, I should suggest him
to get Lego to sponsor this project...
- Jessica Gallegos explained her inspiring
project on improving the life of former female gang members in Honduras by
providing them with life skills (leadership, parenting, child nutrition) and technical
skills (operating machinery to silk print T-shirt). They sell the printed
T-shirt and possibly other merchandise to get a sustainable income.
2. Climate for Change (C4C) described
themselves as a campaign, coalition, and community that cares about climate
change. They engage the youth community by creating a photo competition and
later expanding it to video, music video, and podcast competition; of course,
the theme of the product must be related to climate change. Last year’s winner was Stephon
Gabriel from Trinidad and Tobago; part of his prize was going to MTV in New
York to edit his music video. Other C4C ‘production’ was the street rappers in
Kenya, singing about environment and having famous singers (Eminem, Beyonce,
etc.) donated their songs to be sung by the street singers.
How all of them above could come up with
such remarkable ideas about improving, at least, a dot of problem in a
society... is totally amazed me. I honestly envy them, but ‘good envy’. You
can’t just sit back and relax, you have to commit and take action to do
something for the greater good.
Unfortunately for me, (taking some of the
speakers’ remarks) I’m still in the world of self-serving intention; still figuring
out my real passion; still having the voices of judgment, cynicism, and fear
dancing on my mind; still on the phase where I have to change ‘inside’, to be
able to change ‘outside’. I know someday I will find that ‘hurt’, the inspiration
that no other can touch. Someday I will be able to see what not yet seen, think
what not yet known.
#IPledge to learn more and trust myself
more. NMW.
As with you, #WhatWillYOUthDo with the lottery ticket
that you were born with?
Labels: Reviews