At the Commonwealth Women’s Leader’s Summit, the Secretary- General of the Commonwealth Rt. Hon. Patricia Scotland QC, called for intergenerational partnership to empower women. Following this meeting, myself and a group of inspirational young women from across the Commonwealth, decided that we wanted to help empower women by creating a Mentorship Programme for Women across Member States of the Commonwealth.

There are shocking figures from across the Commonwealth about the barriers women face. For instance, ‘three out of five illiterate young people are females.’ But realistically how can a Mentorship Scheme help overcome these boundaries?

We believe that by having a programme that is intergenerational we show that empowerment does not have to be limited to national boundaries and there is a wealth of people within the Commonwealth willing to commit their time to empowering girls and young women. One of my colleagues from the programme, Amanda, thinks that the programme ‘(not only) bridges the divide between different generations of women but equips women with the tools to shape and design the communities they live in and a future they would be proud of.’ By matching up women who have been empowered, successful and have a lot of skills and wisdom, with young women, we can encourage them to become empowered as well.

In Summer of 2016, we started planning and discussing how we could achieve this, and presented our idea of a Mentorship programme to the Women’s Affairs Ministerial Meeting in September 2016 where Member States mandated the Commonwealth Secretariat to implement an intergenerational programme. After receiving this big support, we have manged create and run this programme with help from the Commonwealth youth networks (in particular the Commonwealth Youth Gender Equality Network (CYGEN) and the Commonwealth Youth Council (CYC), in partnership with the Commonwealth Secretariat, Rotary International and the Commonwealth Businesswomen’s Network.

After successfully creating all the documents and structure to run the programme, in March of this year, I launched the programme at the Commonwealth Secretariat with one of my colleagues from the programme. We accepted applications from women aged 18-29 until April and after a long process of matching successful mentees and mentors, the programme has been running since July 2017. It attracted over 700 applications from young women needing or believing that they needed a mentor for personal and professional development.

The programme is a 6 month pilot and will run until December, which if successful there have been suggestions for this to be a permanent programme run by the Commonwealth!  In the meantime, we have been getting a lot of publicity –we have had press releases from the Commonwealth Secretariat, a retweet by the Prime Minister of Malta, a launch in Guyana, a mention in the House of Lords and have also been all over newspapers and national news channels in the Caribbean!

It has been such a great experience running this programme so far, and just seeing already the benefits that the programme is creating for mentees and mentors alike is so great to see! One of my favourite quotes is ‘empowered women, empower women.’ I can’t wait to review the programme at the end of this year and see if we have been able to truly assist in empowering women!

By Kavita Sharma,  UKYA Commonwealth Ambassador 2015- 2017 and European Representative on the Commonwealth Youth Council 2015- 2017

• See press release here from the Commonwealth http://thecommonwealth.org/media/press-release/mentorship-programme-empower-commonwealth-young-women
• Blog post from Commonwealth Youth Council on our event in Guyana

http://commonwealthyouthcouncil.com/official-launch-of-commonwealth-womens-mentorship-scheme/

For a week this June I plunged into the unfamiliar world of truly international deal making and intrigue. This, sadly, was not up front among the Heads of State and Government at the G20 in Hamburg, but at the Y20 in Berlin, which was hosted a month earlier to compile the worldwide perspective of young people into a report to be presented to the G20 host, government Sherpas and beyond. The stage was set for the daunting undertaking of 70 young people aged 18-35 to create a 30 page report on issues from climate change to global trade to counter-terrorism to empowering women to medical emergencies, and present it to Angela Merkel in 6 days time.

Accompanied by Anna Barker for the first half of the process and Pegah Moulana for the second, I set out, as the UK Representative, with two key aims: that the youth angle on President Trumps withdrawal from the Paris Agreement was a tough one, and that the document as a whole was sharp grammatically and clear of the drivel which so often plagues policy documents. We also set out to get Mental Health Awareness, which is still very much in its infancy in the vast majority of the world, on to the agenda, and unlike any year before it was. I ended up on the climate committee, renamed Climate First, and pushed forward the agenda that the G20 leaders must ground the Paris agreement more deeply by involving more sub-state actors like cities, businesses and state/county/provincial governments in the process. Furthermore, with a firm belief in presenting more solutions than problems, we sought out and adopted several innovative ideas concerning waste disposal, carbon trading and preventative measures to prevent the developing world from making the same polluting mistakes.

However, the event was not without its controversy. As you may expect, several national representatives could not support many issues of equality which we champion in this country. As a consequence, rather than explicit messages of support, more subtle methods had to be found. There was also disagreement in the room whether gender quotas with fixed percentage targets were morally right, with an eventual compromise being met that we must attain a more gender balanced society in all spheres of life. Perhaps the most visible UK contribution into the final touches was pushing through the decision that the document should be in UK rather than US English, as a visible sign of defiance against the Trump climate and immigration agendas which were addressed in the document. Furthermore, the UK and Australia established an English language committee go through the final document making grammatical and wording differences to the document, to ensure it was easy to understand, consistent and youth-friendly, the whole process taking a team of 6 over 5 hours well past midnight.

Finally the day came to present to Merkel, a colossus on the world stage having now served as Chancellor of Germany for nearly 12 years. The presentation took place at the heart of the Chancellory in a large circular room with delegates, translators, TV cameras, the press. She walked in with a smile on her face holding her hands in the familiar diamond shaped clasp which has become her trademark. I had not won the randomly selected place to present on behalf of climate change, though with a seat at the inner table had the opportunity to add supplementary information to Chancellor Merkel, firstly emphasising that the G20 was a place to make a statement to Trump on his withdrawal and to start building sub-national networks to bulwark the agreement in place. I also addressed an issue that had been underrepresented in the presentation so far – a mistrust in her. Well, not just her, but all the politicians, and the process as a whole which seems to review the same issues every year to the tune of billions of pounds and end up with non-action and lies. She seemed to, in her own discrete way, frustratedly agree.

However, with the G20 now over I can see that, in part, I was wrong. The summit still ended with no cast iron guarantees but it had sent a message. The message spread across social media of Donald Trump being snubbed by foreign leaders, and statement after statement on the Paris agreement. I don’t pretend to believe that the Y20 is solely responsible for this, but it brings to mind one of Aesop’s maxims, “Sticks in a bundle can’t be broken but sticks taken singly can be easily broken. Same applies to people.”

Imagine university life without international students; no more foreign crushes, fewer accents to make fun of, a decline in offers of suspicious local alcohols, culminating, its fair to say, in a void once occupied by life-long friends. A deeply toxic, and ugly, culture of isolationism and anti-intellectualism is threatening these things and more, every day hitting our towns and cities through the tabloid press and pandering to a vocal minority at the expense of international students and everyone else.

Recently at a House of Lords committee meeting hosted by Educating Beyond Borders, the damage being done to Britain’s international students by this ideology was laid bare. It emerged that bizarre new lengths are being taken to surpass simply the indignity of being uprooted and booted out after graduation as now some people are being forced out before completing their degree! This has unfortunately come about as many students need to complete a work placement before attaining a degree but the UK government has refused to recognise this as part of the course. This is just part of a campaign by the government to cut immigration figures, which international students are included in, by deliberately making it more difficult to study in the UK and remain after study.

It is has a real impact upon us all too, as most universities cannot sustain themselves without the extra income from international students and may be forced to drastically reduce the number of available courses if this were to continue further. Business people gave a stark warning too, that this brain drain will inevitably create a skills shortage forcing high paying jobs to relocate to Europe and elsewhere. Among representatives of the public sector too there was concern that our NHS, our schools and our infrastructure could fall into ruin in pursuit of a Fortress Britain. Confusingly there seemed to be a consensus in the room among people from all backgrounds despite this apparently being the ‘will of the people’, but there was one sole defending voice in the room, a representative from the government who defended this strategy by throwing out meaningless phrases about tough choices. It seemed, I fear, that their presence was more to give an illusion of consultation and debate in order to stifle the real thing.

The promise of a ‘Global Britain’ has been churned out by government post-Brexit, but surely to realise this vision a path that doesn’t cause the Chinese media to nickname Theresa May ‘Student Hater’ is needed. A Global Britain must play to all its advantages, and already having a 10% share in all international students, which adds up to a £3.5 billion industry feeding into all other aspects of national life, is not something to gamble with for a few cheap votes. Like so many other issues out there among the hustle of the post-Brexit parliament our collective voices barely rose to a whisper. The whisper though, is there. We need students, we need graduates, we need you to make a whisper into a roar.

Once again, the BYC had a very successful COMEM, GA. Although Ewan was new to the system, he was a great asset to the BYC and supported me so much during the election procedure. I am sure that he will do a fantastic job replacing me as the “Official Delegate” commencing September.

We started our COMEM by joining the Gala. I encouraged Ewan to wear his traditional Scottish outfit (Kilt) and due to that he was incredibly popular. This is because

the opportunity for the YFJ to meet someone from Scotland is minimal, but Ewan was fantastic at explaining the multi-cultural side of United Kingdom to other delegates. During the event, we had the opportunity to meet with Committee of Regions (CoR) representatives and spoke diversely about EU’s future. 

There was a key focus on Britain’s future and how dialogue can continue in Britain’s regions. During summer 2016,

UKYA’s Structure Dialogue (England team) alone, managed to visit almost every town and city across Yorkshire and Humberside, but also across different regions including North West, South West and London. Therefore, our report represents the success of achieving such target that other member organisations (MO) may be lagging. However, I believe it is our role to support them by sharing our best practice method, since young people not only live in major big cities but Europe must connect to them locally.

BYC led a workshop about better access to Mental Health Issues(MHI) with the Flemish side of Belgium NYC (VJR) and NLU (Swedish NYC). VJR and NLU spoke about their current progress about securing funding from the government to support programs providing mental health support.During our workshop, I focused on stigmatization of this area. She handed balloons to each participant and everyone had to write one stigma on the balloon. Afterwards everyone placed their balloon in middle and had to pick one balloon randomly. They had to describe what such stigma surrounded and how we should tackle it. After everyone felt satisfied with potential recommendations, balloons were busted. The aim of this workshop was to see how invincible stigmas around (MHI) is and we should prioritize them.

I focused on campaigning for my candidacy to the AC. BBC+ chair (Austria NYC), this consisted of arranging meetings with blocks and cooperation’s for us, so we could present our candidacy. This was extremely successful, since we managed to meet the NBC, Eastern, Southern and the Exchange group/block. The process was long, as candidates required to speak for one minute, explain what Council of Europe means to them in five words and a twitter challenge. Afterwards, we were going to different tables, so they could ask us any question.

On the day of election, I was delighted with the news to be officially elected into the AC.

The workshops that I attended during the conference included topics such as youth rights, the future of Europe and Erasmus + development.

We are aiming to draft a policy paper regarding Brexit on behalf of BYC for next April, to allow other European representatives to have a say on what type of Brexit they are after. There will hardly be an opportunity for European young people to have their say on Brexit negotiations. Therefore, we are going to ensure that not only UK interests are represented when BYC has the chance to sit around the negotiation table, but has the legitimacy of over 104 MO’s input and support. Over 70% of young people aged 18-24 voted to remain in the European Union in the EU Referendum, this is surely an indication, if not the premise for an obligation, for our organisations commitment to a future in Europe rather than an isolationist stance. Through involvement in this forum, we will not only be leading the discussion on the way we want to see the continent go, but also represent British young people to our fullest and generate the cooperation and change they want and deserve.

The conference “EYE CON” (Empowering youth for employment) was organised as a part of the project “Empowering Youth for Employment” implemented by the National Youth Council of Macedonia (NYCM) and supported by the British Embassy in Skopje.

The aim of the conference was to provide space for sharing practices and innovative model for increasing the employability of young people in Europe. According to several reports from EU, World Bank, International Labour Organisation, Macedonia has one of the highest rates of youth unemployment in Europe and is suffering from severe brain-drain. Similarly, in Macedonia, youth employment is not treated as “serious enough” and NYCM faces obstacles when trying to campaign on this area.My participation in the event had a central purpose, to support National Youth Council of Macedonia in normalising discussions around youth employment and sharing best practice from BYC and its member organisations on how to campaign on this topic.

The first panel session of this conference centered around the thematic area of ‘Youth Employment in Macedonia’  and asked the question – what should we strive for?

Guest speakers on this area included the British Embassy representative in Macedonia and the President of NYCM. Key messages from this discussion was that youth development must be prioritised by the government and interested international fields, whilst young people should be encouraged to have their independence when choosing their future career. Guest speakers were requested to share their views about youth employment, their organisations strategy to combat youth employment and what recommendation they would have for Macedonia and its crisis.

Myself as a representative of BYC, shaped my speech under three headlines. BYC has several campaigns that either directly or indirectly contribute to reduction of youth employment. The first method BYC has campaigned is by improving young people’s job opportunity through education. Secondly, BYC has worked hard by encouraging employable circumstances for young people. Lastly, BYC condemns that young people should be supported whilst at work. BYC has contributed to the first category via encouraging PSHE education, pushing for career advisors and enable all young people the ability to have access to work experiences.

Similarly, BYC believes that employable circumstances must be made by non-governmental organisations, helping young people on how to develop their CV, enable them to volunteer and necessary training to have successful interviews.

Lastly, BYC condemns that young people should be protected from abuse during workplace. Therefore, campaigns such as “rise minimum wage” and encouraging “living wage” has been its focus. My message on behalf of BYC and its member organisations to NYCM was to fight for a society that enables young people to decide for their own career and can live in their own home country when they are qualified, rather than being pushed out due to lack of jobs.

Several questions were asked by the audience. One audience member asked about how to make work-experiences adaptable to their society and how can young people from minority groups be protected from this. My answer regarding on work-experience was to enable “compulsory attendance” for a work experience during high school period. This allows all young people to try out their aspiring job and consider if it really suites them. Regarding on minorities, I suggested NYCM and youth activists to push for a change in legislation that makes it an obligation for minorities to be prioritised when applying for jobs or even being supported in their workplace.

The aim of second panel was to focus into what is internally needed to reduce youth unemployment in these areas. NYCM made a list of recommendations to achieve this aim:

1. Greater collaboration of the institutions with National Youth Council of Macedonia and other civil society organizations and establishing partnerships in the processes of creating youth employment policies and other youth policies
2. The Education system in Macedonia needs to be reformed and adapted to comply with current and future needs of the labour market
3. Greater societal value of the work of youth organizations because they present crucial resource that offer employability skills for young people
4. Guaranteed participation of youth organizations in ministerial and sectorial working groups for youth unemployment
5. Creating solutions for collaboration with institutions based on the existing positive practices of National Youth Councils across Europe
6. Private sector and companies should create job positions that relate to the profile of young people
7. Private sector and companies should connect directly with students by establishing companies educational centre or fellowship programs.
8. Private sector and companies to establish collaboration with organizations by creating joint activities aimed to increase employability skills of young people
9. Greater value and acknowledge of the skills and competences gain through non-formal education which are key for successful transition from education to employment
10. Raising the level of understanding of young people of their rights to avoid to be abused by their employees.
11. Greater level of youth information for existing opportunities for development of young people
12. Schools, universities, institutions and youth organizations shall work on increasing the level of motivation of young people to participate in opportunities for their development.
13. Young people shall always receive financial compensation for their engagement with companies on various ways.
14. Institutions shall increase its monitoring activities on the working condition of young people
15. Various stakeholders should conduct research to obtain information on the percentage of young people with employment contacts longer than 6 months
16. Institutions shall implement all international conventions and agreements where Macedonia is signatory party

Overall, the aim of this conference was to remove the stigma around this area and encourage discussions on what approach works best. Youth unemployment should not be under-estimated and it should not be left until adulthood to be tackled.

In preparation for the conference we met in Belfast to discuss the previous EUYC which was held in Slovakia, and the actions to take from the recommendations. Following this and using the report as a guide we prepared an action plan on how we would achieve the recommendations that came out of the Kosice conference.

Upon arrival and once registered, the conference was underway. There were some minor problems with workshop allocations but this was easily rectified and after some brief introductions the workshops themselves were underway.

My workshop was the fifth one and focused on two recommendations that were generated at the Slovakia.

Recommendation One
The European commission and the member states should ensure that every young person, regardless of their personal and social situation, can fully engage in volunteering activities by making them accessible. Engagement should be ensured, for instance in youth organisations to create a sense of belonging and to empower young people as citizens.

Recommendation Two
Educational institutions and local stakeholders in cooperation with young people, should provide tailor made support, accessible service as well as create space for meaningful interaction, so that all young people can discover and emphasise their individual identity and values. This is the basis for building material trust between young people from different backgrounds.

Whilst sharing and debating some ideas, accessibility was mentioned with relation to the socio-cultural economic implications of the diversity of societies. Involving NWG, NGO, Local Authorities, Devolved Nations, and UK Govt. in generating accessible networks for young people across the EU. Youth organisations are a platform for personal development and distinction has been made between youth led orgs, and Youth orgs. Empowering young people to develop their societies and communities and have pride in their cultures. The actions that will be generated in this workshop will be generalised to ensure it is applicable for all with a minor focus on vulnerable groups.

An interactive part of the work shop was a visit to the Voluntary Council of Volunteers in Valletta the capital of Malta. The work of the council is built upon three pillars, characteristic building, training, and financial support for organisations. The support allows for peer to peer learning and is targeted for young people to go into Europe, with a focus on local volunteering and then international volunteering (Africa, Europe, and Asia). They also allow for development by providing facilities for organisations and young people.

They are part funded by the government with paid staff however, there is a board of governors which is 11 representatives from the sector and is fully voluntary. There is legislation on the voluntary sector which relates to the funding of voluntary monies. Organisations wishing to apply for funding must be registered with the commissioner of Malta and the budgets are scrutinised by a member of staff with funding released over time and only finalised once the final report released. Funding can be specific for sectors where the council enables them to apply for funding from individual govt. departments, i.e. Environment, sport/arts funding.

There are two funding streams which are open across the sector and is not specific to the organisations sector. They class a volunteer which does a service or gives time, expertise or energy that benefits another without requiring remuneration. 1100 voluntary organisations registered (2000 estimated) in Malta which has a population of ½ million, one organisation for every 455 citizens. The funding should be complemented and Malta has manged to do this effectively. There is a specific funding for young people to emphasise the benefit of volunteering whilst encouraging young people by ensuring a financial safeguard for young people. CVS is starting a more comprehensive skill based learning education by removing students who find conventional school environment difficult and placing them in a mixed environment of different voluntary organisations where they can learn the skills they need in a work environment out with the classroom. The CVS allows for safe guarding of volunteers by ensuring stringent regulation of the voluntary sector. CVS enable vulnerable groups by having a contingency funding stream for groups which may require additional funding before the current cycle ends, however, in general these groups follow the same requirements as other organisations. Good practices are not only shared within Malta but also at an international level.

Now – the event was not ALL meetings and there were some great opportunities to network and a visit to the national aquarium. This made the work filled days’ worth it! We were also treated to a specialist Maltese celebration which was amazing considering the weather was rather warm and enjoyable.

The most important part of the conference however is the result of the workshops, where my workshop focused on the key aspect of researching as to why those who do not openly engage in volunteering activities etc., struggle to engage and would be a continuous process to ensure that young people continue to participate and are encouraged to engage in volunteering activities

After the ruling of the High Court yesterday stating that the Prime Minister does not have the right to trigger the Article 50 process without getting the backing of Parliament, the media and the public from both the Leave and the Remain campaigns have reignited the feud, with hateful and worrying comments being posted on both mainstream and social media.  Here is a short reactionary piece form Chris calling for a better kind of democracy…

“I have a radical opinion: hardly anyone has a political opinion because they’re evil.

People wonder why I don’t want to go into politics, and I don’t because it’s a very toxic, spiteful and hateful field. It’s full of lies and hate because people cannot understand that their opponents are not bad people – they want to make the world a better place, they just disagree on how to do it.  This applies to left and right, sometimes evil intentions do exist, but 90% of the time they don’t. You might not understand how someone can come to their conclusions, but that still doesn’t make them a bad person. That just means you lack empathy and understanding.

After two big referendums, division is rife, and neither side wants to understand the other. They’d rather spit vile hatred and abuse at each other. Who does this benefit?
It might sound cheesy and idealist, but I do wish we could all just assume that every wants what is best, and debate each other without malice, hate or abuse.”

If you have any questions about Brexit, here is an “all you need to know” article by the BBC

Interested in youth participation? Want to know more about our international work? Want to get involved?

Join us at a reception on Monday, 10th of July in the iconic Grand Saloon at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane to Celebrate Our European Youth Voice. 

Over the last year we have been working on research, consultations and meeting with decision makers over the theme of: “Enabling young people to engage in a diverse, connected and inclusive Europe”

This event will be a chance for you to learn about our achievements over the last 18 months and our youth representation in European structured dialogue. You will join us for a launch of our new video that shall be used to share the fantastic opportunities that we provide for young people in international particpation as well as the outcomes of the last cycle of structured dialogue. This will be accompanied by a free copy of a report that will give you an insight to the youth-led consultation that was carried out last summer that engaged with over 1,000 young people on their European engagement.

Register for this free event here. 

For young people who wish to attend there is a limited number of travel bursaries available on a first come first served basis – contact jessica.simonds@byc.org.uk for more information.

You will also get to meet our UK Young Ambassadors and learn from them what it takes to be a representative of young people in the UK. This will be a great opportunity if you are hoping to apply for a role over the next few weeks.