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Guest blog from Kenya: celebrating young people’s contribution

By Katrina Crew
November 27, 2009 at 2:40 pm

In her third blog about the Red Cross’ General Assembly in Kenya, Laura Deacon talks about the incredible support for youth throughout the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement.

For those of you that managed to get to the end of my first marathon blog without falling asleep, you would have read about my highlight of speaking at the General Assembly. The moment I got my “big moment” was during the report of the Youth Commission and I thought you might like to hear what some of the other delegates – young and older (I don’t want to be ageist) – had to say about youth in the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement.

From the Youth Commission themselves, they highlighted with thanks the opportunities created for them to be involved in the consultation process for Strategy 2020 and were pleased there was “genuine dialog for integration”. They did, however, point out for this to work there was a need for youth programmes to be resourced.

Finland called for all National Societies to bring a youth delegate to the 2011 General Assembly, with Uganda noting that both presidential candidates – although pledging to work with youth – did not have youth delegates in attendance. Australia and Panama highlighted the Movement’s need to look to the Solferino Declaration, a united voice of 500 youth from across the Movement, to understand how young people within the Red Cross and Red Crescent plan to move forward. They called for all National Societies to support and ensure implementation of the youth declaration and the future youth policy, with Uganda saying that without doing this the new Strategy 2020 will never be achieved in full.

Russia, a National Society without a youth delegate, encouraged the Federation to support the youth of National Societies that don’t have the funds to do so themselves, saying youth across the world need equal access to materials and decision-making processes. Peru also pointed out the need for resources to engage youth across National Societies.

Egypt celebrated the mention of youth, not only in the Youth Commission report, but also in the health and care and development reports showing that youth are valued across the Movement, not just in youth activity.

Tanzania talked about the need to consider not just youth in the Movement but also youth as the beneficiaries of Red Cross and Red Crescent work. Their delegate highlighted the need to think about the vulnerable young people in our countries.

It was one of the most animated discussions of the entire General Assembly and the most important observation for me was that it was not just youth delegates who were speaking up in support of young people in the Movement, but also heads of delegations and delegations that didn’t even have a youth presence.

Leave your comments on youth in the Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement. How important do you think young people are in moving forward with Strategy 2020?

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Tags: governance, International, strategy

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This entry was posted on Friday, November 27th, 2009 at 2:40 pm and is filed under Fundraising and events. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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