“Everybody was talking about young people, but no one was actually listening to young people talk.”
5 Questions to Christie Albrecht, Chief Strategy Officer at Junior Chamber International, on youth engagement
“I attended the UN General Assembly and the events around it, and I was blown away that everybody was talking about young people, but no one was actually listening to young people talk,” said Christie Albrecht, who was cut off by a burst of applause at the Closing Plenary of the SDG Global Festival of Action.
From March for Our Lives fighting against gun violence, to Fridays for Future demanding climate action, youth movement is gaining momentum nationally and internationally. It came as no surprise that youth engagement was one of the popular themes running through the entire Festival, with several sessions dedicated to exploring how to mobilize youth for the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
So how can we engage young people and harness their energy and creativity, without making it tokenistic? While Christie acknowledged the importance of providing them with tools and resources, if there’s one piece of advice from her, it’s this: “A lot of times you just have to get out of their way.” (Another round of claps and cheers from the audience.)
Shortly after the Festival, I caught up with Christie to hear her thoughts about the Festival, youth empowerment, and an exciting opportunity offered by JCI in partnership with SDSN Youth. Read on to learn more!
What do you like most about the Global Festival of Action?
The Global Festival of Action is one of my favorite events I’ve ever been to. It’s a bunch of people from all over the world who are taking action on the SDGs, who are really the people doing the work. It’s also really cool because the program is created by the attendees. So anyone who’s attending has the opportunity of presenting an idea and hosting a session to dive into whatever area of the Global Goals they’re most passionate about, whether it’s gender equality, climate action, or something else.
You shared your experience at the UNGA where no one is actually listening to young people talk. How can we make sure their voices are taken seriously?
The first step is actually including young people in the conversations that are happening. A lot of conferences that you go to nowadays have a 50-50 rule, where 50 percent of any panel needs to be female to ensure it’s representative of 50 percent of the world’s population being female. I’ve heard a suggestion of incorporating the same idea, but for young people. Depending on how you define young people, it could be 18 percent of the world’s population or 30 percent of the world’s population. That should be represented in the speakers — that 30 percent of every panel should be a young person.
What happens a lot of times is organizations will say, “If we bring this one young person from rural Ghana to speak at the beginning of the event, then that checks the box and we can move on letting the adults do all the talking.” It’s tokenistic and it’s not meaningful dialogue. There are not leaders listening to the actual concerns of young people and the actual work of young people.
The second step is giving them a space for meaningful discussion. What we see in JCI is that young people have the creativity, the motivation, and the skills to make a difference. If we’re working with young people and respect them in the contributions they make, we’re going to be much more powerful.
You mentioned young people need tools and resources to make an impact. How is JCI empowering them through the Global Youth Empowerment Fund?
The Global Youth Empowerment Fund is a joint initiative of JCI and the SDG Action Campaign started in 2016, with the aim to support young people who are trying to make an impact in their communities. We offer small-scale funding to youth-led non-profit projects that are advancing the SDGs in some way.
Are there any projects you can think of now that are great examples of young people taking action for the SDGs?
There’s one project in Ghana called Food for All Africa, where this young chef named Elijah realized there was a lot of food being wasted and a lot of hungry children. He created an app to help match up leftover food from grocery stores and restaurants with hungry children in schools, which has grown into a nationwide program that helps feed hungry children through what was essentially waste before.
Another project is called Water of Life (K’aslem Ya’) from Guatemala. It’s an organization based in a small community where deforestation and the lack of clean drinking water are some of the challenges they face. They train families to build eco-bricks that are made out of inorganic waste such as plastic bottles that won’t decompose. Then they build rain harvesting systems out of these bricks to supply drinking water to the community.
These are just two of the incredibly creative solutions developed by our past grantees of the Fund.
You announced a new partnership between the Fund and SDSN Youth at the Closing Plenary. Could you tell us more about it?
With the new partnership with the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network Youth (SDSN Youth), we’re able to offer more resources and more recognition to youth-led innovations for the Global Goals. The application is open until 1 June, 23:59 (Pacific Time), so there’s still time to go and apply. If you are one of the projects selected, you’ll be featured in the Youth Solutions Report, receive access to SDSN Youth’s Investment Readiness Program, and be eligible for funding from the Global Youth Empowerment Fund.
Update: The application has already closed. Follow JCI and SDSN Youth for more opportunities for young people.
Organized by the UN SDG Action Campaign, the SDG Global Festival of Action takes place at the World Conference Centre in Bonn, Germany, from May 2 to 4, 2019. Check out @SDGaction and #SDGglobalFest for highlights of the Festival, and catch up on the Closing Plenary if you missed it!
