Mainstreaming Youth for Sustainable Development in 2021
With the global pandemic, socio-economic crisis has been running in tandem with the health crisis. In this wave, young people are not left behind and 2021 was another challenging year.
Despite the challenges, UNDP Nepal in collaboration with other UN agencies in Nepal, youth-led organizations, government, academia, and private sector mainstreamed youth via different youth focused initiatives.
Youth as Change Agents
We did not only engage youth as beneficiaries but also as change agents with around 10,000 direct and 5.6 million indirect reach across the nation. Youth led campaigns, dialogues, and empowerment programme on thematic issues such as gender equality, mental health, entrepreneurship, innovation, civic engagement, and climate action are some of the areas we worked on to encourage meaningful youth engagement on and participation.
Guiding Principles on Youth Mainstreaming and Participation
UNDP Nepal developed its Guiding Principles on Youth Mainstreaming and Participation in 2021 in guidance of its National Youth Strategy 2018–2022 and UN Framework for Responding to the Socio-Economic Impacts of COVID-19 in Nepal. This document aims to lead the programmes and strategies to ensure youth’s engagement not only as beneficiaries but also as partners and agents of change for good governance, economic prosperity, climate action, and beyond.
Based on this guiding principle, we had the following integrated youth focused interventions in 2021 that involved thousands of youths from across the country.
Youth as Green Volunteers
“Sachetana: Our health, our responsibility”, a joint awareness campaign by UNDP’s Promoting Green Recovery Project (PGRP) and a youth led organization Maina Devi Foundation started from July to October 2021. The pandemic has caused the generation of health care waste (HCW) in enormous quantities, and improper disposal of HCW can put communities at risk of infection. Sachetana primarily aimed to overcome this problem by disseminating information about health care waste management at households or simply responsible disposal at grass-roots levels as a part of the response to COVID-19. There were 300 volunteers representing 300 different local levels from all 77 districts of Nepal with 55% of female volunteers and 30% of volunteers from marginalized communities. The campaign reached out to 6.5 million people through digital platforms. The campaign was not only limited to digital campaigning but also led to some physical clean up events. The volunteers collaborated with youths and stakeholders at their community and organized clean-up campaign in 8 distinct locations across six districts of Nepal such as Lalitpur, Hetauda, Kailali, Achham, Surkhet etc.
“Being a volunteer of Sachetana campaign has helped me to be a responsible citizen. I am able to sensitize my community people on proper use and disposal of mask after being a part of this campaign”, says Diksha Khadka, one of the volunteers of Sachetana Campaign.
UNDP’s PGRP also committed to promoting sustainable lifestyles, by encouraging cycling through a campaign, “My way, Greenway.”
Inter-Country Echange Programme
Thailand-Nepal Youth Exchange Series on COVID Experience’ was another initiative that promoted South-South Cooperation among youths. This was a virtual dialogue between youths from Nepal and Thailand jointly organized by UNDP Nepal and Thailand country office and Youth Council in Action for Nation (YOUTH CAN). This virtual programme came into picture to provide youth from both countries with a platform to learn and exchange their experience and ideas related to COVID. Around 500+ young people from Nepal and Thailand were benefitted out of these six episodes of knowledge exchange series on pressing issues such as entrepreneurship, mental health, e-learning the new normal, climate change, youth innovation and cultural values.
“In this Covid-19 pandemic, Youth+ Virtual Exchange was the most amazing platform which provided me the experience and exposure that bridged we youth of Nepal and Thailand”, one of the participants Prawesh Gautam shares his experience.
Advocacy on Mental Health
Campaign for Mental Health Awareness “May for Mental Health” led in partnership with KOSHISH helped in creating awareness about mental wellbeing among people, especially youth. There were a series of activities that took place during the campaign which were sharing wellness promotional videos and tips via social media, dialogue on the topic related to enhancing mental health and well- being during crisis situations. The campaign reached out to around 98.5 thousand people through different online and offline platforms. This campaign helped youth to talk about mental health and encouraged them to support their family and friends.
Electoral Education to Youth
Expanding opportunities for youth, UNDP’s Electoral Support Programme (ESP) has been designing its activities with the youth at the centre. This year, ESP presented the Election Commission Nepal with an Election Question and Answer Book, which contains over 680 questions on elections and their answers and handed over 1000 hard copies to the Commission. It is hoped that this book will allow the youth as well as those in academia to learn about elections in Nepal. Along with that, ESP also conducted a virtual interaction with youth volunteers and members of the National Youth Council encouraging them to enroll in the voter roll as well as informing them of the process to do so. ESP also found innovative ways of working around the pandemic in order to support the Election Commission. The Nirwachan Siksya (Android and IOS) mobile application was developed by ESP for ECN to use as one of the civic and voter education outreach tools, also targeting the youth.
Youth’s Participation in International Days
UNDP Nepal celebrated International Women’s Day with the theme “Women in leadership: Achieving an equal future in a COVID-19 world” in a very youthful way in partnership with Rato Bangala Foundation (RBF). We organized a virtual poetry competition involving the students from Grade 8 to Grade 12 standard from government model schools that helped the students to enhance their confidence to speak against gender-based violence in a poetic way. The beauty of this programme was the diverse participation of young poets where poetry was recited in local languages as well.
International Youth Day 2021 was commemorated in alignment to this year’s theme “Transforming Food Systems: Youth Innovation for Human and Planetary Health” in partnership with United Nations Youth Group in support of National Youth Council, WWF Nepal and CREASION. A two-day Youth Innovation Workshop was conducted that brought together 20 participants from diverse backgrounds to discuss on and share their perspectives regarding the challenges facing the food system in Nepal. The young people suggested measures to tackle the issues pertaining to the food system in Nepal.
International Mountain Day was organized with full youth engagement with the students of Institute of Forestry (IoF) Pokhara and ‘Youth Hike’ in partnership with other UN Agencies, IoF Pokhara and youth led organization Nepalese Youth for Climate Action (NYCA). The youth participants came up with some potential solutions such as research on information flow on the potential impact of glacier melting to community people, inter-country collaboration to tackle the issue and serious legal steps from authorities to minimize the impact of climate change.
“Gifted with mountains and glaciers it is essence to provide tribute to those gifts. Being engaged in an interaction programme on Tribute to Glaciers, it helped me to understand why glaciers matter and the steps to be taken in order to protect the underlying communities from the havoc that can occur due to changing climate”, says Dinesh Bhusal, one of the members of NYCA.
Partnership for Empowering Youth
UNDP and UNICEF in Nepal have collaboration for Generation Unlimited (GenU) youth challenge and Adolescent and Youth Friendly Local Governance (AYFLG) programme. GenU aims to enhance the capacity of adolescent girls for campaigning in different social problems whereas AYFLG aims to enhance the capacity of local representatives to develop adolescent and youth friendly programme at the local level. We will be reaching out to at least 1 local level of each province with the aim of promoting them as Adolescent and Youth Friendly Local Governance in 2022.
UNDP supports to youth, drawing on its multidisciplinary approach towards development in policies and programming. We have an integrated approach to mainstream youth in our interventions in partnership with the relevant stakeholders including the private sector and government. We look forward to working with and supporting more young minds in 2022 as well.
Author
Binita Karki, Youth Programme Officer
