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	Listening to the Next Generation By Dena Merriam

Young people now in their twenties will play a key becoming part of the global market economy. They will bear many of the burdens caused by climate change and environmental disruptions, but they also will have the potential to heal the scars left by generations of war, inequality, and oppressions of various types and degrees. This is a generation in which many of us have come to invest great hope, one which can inspire us to envision a bright future for our world. But they will need much assistance as they move into their adult lives and begin to make decisions not just for themselves but also for their communities.

The first global generation

This generation is the first one to think globally and the first to be connected to a worldwide web of information and networks. Until now, there has been little serious analysis of how this will affect their thinking and behavior, but we have already begun to see the results in the work we are doing with young people around the world.

We began our interest in young people when we were working on a communications project with the United Nations Development Programme. When the project was completed, our colleague at the UN, Dr. Djibril Diallo, began discussing with us the need to mobilize young people in support of the eight UN Millennium Development Goals (MDGs, as they are known), which had been approved by the General Assembly at the UN Millennium Heads of State Summit in 2000, and again confirmed at the recent UN Heads of State Summit this past September. When we began this project in the fall of 2003, there was very little outreach to young people on the part of the UN. Some years earlier we had formed a non-governmental organization (NGO) called the Global Peace Initiative of Women (GPIW), which was focused on mobilizing civil society efforts for peacebuilding in areas of conflict and post-conflict. We decided to collaborate with Dr. Diallo through this NGO, knowing that one of Ruder·Finn’s clients, Shumei International, would also be interested in the project. It was a perfect fit.

Since Dr. Diallo is a Senegalese national, he reached out to the government of Senegal to help take the first step. President Abdoulaye Wade agreed to sponsor a ground-breaking Pan-African Youth Leadership Summit in Dakar, Senegal, in June 2004, in collaboration with the United Nations and The Global Peace Initiative of Women. The local UNDP offices in each African country selected two delegates, a young man and a young woman between the ages of 20 and 30 who had shown leadership ability. We brought in a small number of international delegates so we could begin building the global network of the next-generation leaders we envisioned.

The goal of the Summit was initially twofold: to identify and mobilize a new generation of leaders, and to stimulate civil society activities among young people in the effort to achieve the Millennium Development Goals—namely, the halving of extreme poverty, a stemming of the HIV/AIDS epidemic, gender equity, improved healthcare for mothers and newborns, universal access to primary education, environmental sustainability, and the fostering of international partnerships with a focus on improving governance.

The young people who participated in the first Pan-African Youth Leadership Summit were already working in one of the Millennium Development Goal areas. But it was clear their interest was not limited to these strictly defined themes. They were interested in stimulating entrepreneurship and becoming part of the global market economy; they were interested in trade issues, in working to reduce conflict and halt the illegal flow of weapons into their communities. They were interested in achieving a stronger global voice for Africa, in working for greater cooperation among the religions, in connecting with each other. In essence, this talented, bright, articulate group of young Africans were preparing themselves to take their place in the global arena.

One of the discoveries we made is how difficult communication is within Africa. This made the building of an African network a challenging goal. The colonial powers that ruled Africa for much of the last century did not create a viable transportation system, so the roads are poor and there are no trains to speak of connecting the countries. Often to get from one African county to a neighboring African county, one has to travel through Europe— and for this one needs a transit visa, which is not always easy to get. In essence, the old colonial system still affects the ability of Africans to connect with one another.

Our delegate from Sudan has to take five planes and pass through five countries in order to get to Senegal—a trip that should not take more than a few hours. Many others had to pass through France. The length of time it took them to make the trip, and the frustrations caused by the long travel hours created a deep appreciation and eagerness to make the most of the experience. Many of the young people had not met African youth from other countries before. Having such an opportunity in itself created a sense of achievement.

The second summit—the Pan-Asian Youth Leadership Summit—took place in Hiroshima, Japan, and was sponsored by Shumei International, a longtime Ruder·Finn client. The idea was to bring young people from Asia to see Hiroshima—to speak with survivors of the nuclear bomb, visit the memorial and experience the impact of nuclear destruction. All of this was planned as a function of the Millennium Development Goals, which are meant to create more equitable and peaceful societies. The five regional chairs from the Pan-African Youth Leadership Summit were invited to present to the Asian delegates a report of what they had achieved during their summit in Senegal.

The greatest success of the Asia Summit was the exchange between the African and Asian youth delegates. One of our objectives was to foster projects on the ground—and from these two summits, a number of specific projects emerged. That generated great enthusiasm among the young people. A connection was struck during the first summit between one of the African delegates who worked on HIV/AIDS and a delegate from Thailand, who was skilled in web design—and from this came the creation of a website for the HIV/AIDS work of the African delegate.

During the second summit, a more extensive project was developed. Some of the delegates visited an environmental project in Japan, a Natural Agriculture farm created and run by Shumei, which has been a focus of Ruder·Finn’s public relations work. The delegate from Zambia was so inspired that she sought more information from Shumei in the hope of setting up a similar project in her country.

One of the most articulate delegates in the youth leadership summit series, Barbara Hachipuka had lost her mother in a tragic car accident a year earlier. Her father was a member of the parliament in Zambia and her mother had started a women's farming and her mother had started a women’s farming cooperation before her death. It was not known what would become of this work now that her mother was gone.

Shumei immediately organized a visit to Zambia, fell in love with the country and began working with Barbara to bring Natural Agriculture, a form of food production without any chemicals, to the women’s cooperative. A strong partnership has developed between the countries, and now, only one year later, 1,500 women farmers are supporting themselves through this Natural Agriculture farming cooperative, addressing three of the Millennium Development Goal themes—poverty reduction, gender equity, and environmental sustainability.

From this Asian Summit, we identified a dynamic group of young people who were already rising to leadership in their countries. Outstanding among them were the two delegates from Vietnam, a young woman from Iran getting her Masters Degree in the field of human rights in Islam, two from Afghanistan and Pakistan, Sri Lanka, South Korea, and Japan. There were also two from India—Nandita Das, a prominent Indian movie actress, and Sachin Pilot, the youngest member of the Indian Parliament. We all felt there was tremendous potential in this remarkable group.

As interest in the youth leadership series began to grow, the United Nations Development Programme office in Brazil expressed the desire to organize a similar event for Latin America. In May 2005, we organized the Latin American and the Caribbean Youth Leadership Summit, with support from the government of Brazil and the Citizen’s Institute, a local non-governmental organization.

Again, a group of outstanding young people emerged— many of them actively working in their communities on environmental issues. From this emerged the idea to hold a special international youth forum on problems of deforestation. These young people are serious about placing environmental issues at the top of the global agenda. They are concerned about the future, especially what global warming will create for all of mankind. They don’t want to wait until the changes are upon us. They want to act now. Some suggested that the right to a clean environment be added to the Human Rights Charter. Others suggested it be considered a moral ethical and religious issue to be taken up by the religious communities.

Democracy and good governance were also central issues during this summit, and the Citizen’s Institute led a key session on youth and public policy. From this group, delegates from Mexico, Haiti, Brazil, and Ecuador emerged as regional leaders in the debate.

As word of the summits spread, more governments expressed interest in the idea, and the government of Morocco offered to host another African Youth Leadership Summit. It was held at the beautiful Al- Akhawayn University in Ifrane, Morocco, in August 2005. In addition to two delegates from each African country, the four regional chairs from Latin America and three from Asia also participated. A special session on peacebuilding was organized, with a presentation from the delegation from Sudan.

During the first Pan-African Youth Leadership Summit, I was struck by one of the delegates from Sudan, a woman named Amel al Dehaib, who was working on gender issues in her country. We continued to communicate with each other after the Summit. Some months later, the Global Peace Initiative of Women organized a Summit of Israeli and Palestinian women at the Dead Sea in Jordan, and since there was a youth component to this event, we invited Amel and two other young women from this youth leadership series to participate. We didn’t realize the impact it would have on Amel, who was from the north of Sudan and was living in Khartoum. She returned home and asked for our help in organizing a similar event in Sudan, only this time not only with women, but focused on young people. We asked her to find a counterpart from the south, which she did.

These two women, one a Muslim from the north and the other a Christian from the south, presented their story at the peacebuilding session during the second African Youth Leadership Summit. They talked about the need for healing after a generation of war, and said that only their generation could do it. They were tired of war. They saw conflict as a political tool—not the desire of the people—and they asked for help from their peers, both the African and international group, in helping to organize a Sudan Youth Peace Dialogue to explore how young people could heal the past and work toward a peaceful future.

After they spoke, a young woman from Rwanda got up to speak. She was a striking, beautiful woman of 23 who was a law student in Rwanda. “We Africans have to become shock absorbers,” she said, and she told how, as a young law student, she had been asked to write the defense of a man accused in the genocide. When she learned who it was, she realized it was the man who had killed her uncle and his family. She went through torment for a few days, not knowing what to do. But she realized that if the people in her country were to reconcile their differences, she had to practice it, not just speak about it.

Every day, she said, they see people who they know were killers, but they had to practice reconciliation. And so, she wrote the defense for this man. She spoke with wisdom far beyond her years, and when people heard her there were many tears in that assembly. When I asked those attending the conference who came from a country in conflict—many, many young people stood up.

Most moved by this session was one of the Asian delegates, a young man from Sri Lanka. He joined together with the African delegates to form a Young Leaders Peace Council. He promised to bring a group from Sri Lanka to work with the youth from Sudan, and hoped that they would also come to Sri Lanka for a subsequent Sri Lankan Youth Peace Dialogue.

I saw that these young people were ready to work toward the betterment of their communities. Our responsibility was to provide them with the forum to do so, support their efforts, and be there as mentors. Our goal would be to pass on some of the wisdom we have gained through our experience in the past.

One of the missing links in this whole effort is the young people from the United States. How do our youth figure into this mix? Where are their energies focused and how are they being trained to become good global citizens? While there are many local mentoring efforts in the U.S., these are not enough. Unless our young leaders are prepared to live in a global community, they will not be ready for what the future holds. We have seen the results of our inability to understand global realities. This generation of Americans has the potential to know their peers in Africa, Latin America, and Asia, to build a network of collaboration where they can understand each other’s issues and offer exchange as equal partners. If we want to explain to young Americans why they must care about the conflicts, famines, and tragedies in other parts of the world, we must help them to become engaged and enable them to know young people in these regions.

The government of Canada is now considering sponsoring a North American Youth Leadership Summit in June 2006, and there is also interest in one for the Arab States. This series will culminate in a Global Youth Leadership Summit in New York at UN headquarters sometime in the second half of 2006. This will be the beginning of building a strong base of next-generation leaders who can start working together.

While the Global Peace Initiative of Women is the key partner with the UN for this youth leadership series, other organizations have come on board. Shumei International remains a sponsor, and another Japanese NGO, ITRI, has given generously to both African Summits and the Latin American Summit. ITRI has made possible the participation of many young delegates who would not otherwise be able to attend. My own work with this leadership initiative has been mainly through The Global Peace Initiative of Women and has been a major contribution by Ruder·Finn. Some of our clients who have corporate social responsibility programs and also have a stake in the global community have expressed interest in the program, and we are hoping to bring them into the Global Summit planned for next year.

I have now spent many, many hours listening to young people from around the world. I have learned a great deal, but mostly what I have seen is that they don’t yet carry the wounds created by a world filled with complexity and injustice, and grown increasingly violent. For many, their societies are in transition, and they are eager to lead the way. Young people in Africa, Asia, and Latin America are rising to meet the challenges of their generation and are eager to partner with us in the U.S. The key to our future is how well we will respond.