Unleashing Youth Power in All Spheres of Sustainability
In the book of the wise, Kofi Annan said, “young people should be at the forefront of global change and innovation. Empowered, they can be key agents for development and peace. If, however, they are left on society’s margins, all of us will be impoverished”. He further advised thus, “Let us ensure that all young people have every opportunity to participate fully in the lives of their societies.”
Youth is golden. It’s the early morning sun in all its vitamin D glory. It can nourish and repair but soon after, only understands the language of beating down on other constituents. Youths are influential, and by all sense of reasoning, we cannot achieve sustainability without including them in the process.
The child they say is the father of the man. This isn’t a statement that pertains to family alone; it also has to do with sustainability. If the word ‘sustainable’ truly means meeting the present needs without hampering the future, the youth’s power in actualizing sustainability cannot be jettison.
The spheres of sustainability are widely constituted of economic, environmental, and social structures. In each sphere, all actions of the present should be geared towards development. And that’s without compromise on the growth of any. That is the primary visionary measure of sustainability.
Engaging the youths to work at the engines of sustainability would alone drastically reduce vices that threaten laudable development. Nations with a teeming population of youths but no system in place, where their sheer strength is not in use, will eventually have a high record of that strength being employed illicitly. We need to maximize the numbers of our youths towards the people, planets, and profits.
Opportunities to engage youths in their numbers have to be employed, even at the expense of sidelining technology. Yes, massive labor market recruitment in favorable industry sectors, which eventually results in many people settling in a career, would do two things. It would draw the nation’s attention to industry building because of the large number of committed human labor. Also, the young would become increasingly trained in essential skills.
The youths should be sensitized, and more importantly compensated, till they are individually invested in the environment’s state. Plans like afforestation, reforestation, recycling, and waste management should be repackaged in ways that will appeal to younger populations to participate.
The youth population is a hard-to-diminish resource. When ignored, a likely-taken goldmine. Apart from the wealth of energy at their disposal, this ratio of ages counts to be better equipped with information on current world direction, having their craze with keeping up with trends to thank.
There is a need to allow the youths to get training on the job. To continue an upward trajectory in the journey of sustainability, posterity demands practical nurturing. Our young population must be exposed to the practicality of planning and directing growth and development. The best time to plan a nation was to start grooming its leaders some 50 years ago. The second-best time is with the youths.
Finally, the juvenile is the elder of tomorrow. Expectedly, responsibility for world affairs would eventually fall to the child of today. And that’s from being passive to becoming active, from minuscule to magnanimously. It would be advantageous to distant posterity to beneficially engage the youths and steer them towards a predetermined direction while improving the state of affairs.
Author: Oladimeji Ayodeji
Photo credit: UN News Centre
