Youth run the world.
If you have doubts, just look into the data.
A quarter of the world’s population are young people. An unprecedented number of 1.8 billion of boys and girls is the largest cohort of youth in the history of our planet. The majority of them live in the developing countries. In Ukraine, the share of young people is 15 percent from the total population.
These are no ordinary figures. This is a global generation of young people who define 100 percent of our future.
The demographic trends send an explicit message: investment in young people is essential to social and economic growth.
By 2025, the youth will represent the lion’s share of global workforce. Thus, what opportunities we open for them today will determine the future we will share.
Young people are different from older generations. They are plugged into the world. Smartphones are their essential gadgets. Access to the internet is their basic need. They communicate across cultures through memes and stickers.
We call them Generation Unlimited, as young people know our world in a unique way.
Communication technologies interconnected boys and girls like never before. Their voices spread via Youtube in a matter of seconds. They are well equipped with hashtags and online streaming. Their information field is limitless.
Research shows that 94 percent of young people communicate online every day. Our survey in Ukraine shows that 25 percent of adolescents are constantly thinking about checking updates on social media. According to our estimates, by 2021 more than 20 million adolescents in Ukraine and Eastern Europe will be connected, engaged, and empowered.
The voices of the most vulnerable youth are loud like never before.
The youth are aware and engaged. As we learned this year, over 20 percent of adolescents in Ukraine are involved in activities of child and youth NGOs. And they are not shy to claim their rights to health, safe education, and life opportunities.
Greta Thunberg’s single-handled protest against the climate change resonated with millions and grew into a global action. We should all learn from her.
Having open minds, young people find creative solutions for serious social challenges. Ukraine has plenty of examples. A schoolgirl from Mariupol, Kateryna Malkina, discovered how to use larvae to dispose plastic waste. Three young inventors, Andrii Konovalenko, Lesia Kondratiuk, and Ivan Selezniov launched an Open World social startup. They help people with visual impairments to navigate urban infrastructure by installing BLE-based beacons on buildings, public transportation and other objects.
But this generation also faces uncommon challenges. Almost every fifth young person between the ages of 15 and 24 is unemployed and is not in school or training. The situation is aggravated by protracted conflicts and forced displacement. Attacks on schools. Limited access to medicine and education.
As you can imagine, some of these challenges are very well familiar to young people in Ukraine. Moreover, they directly affect them.
What can we do for the youth? Provide proper education opportunities.
This year, the International Youth Day is all about transforming education. This is not just about ensuring safe and accessible learning environments, which is a grave problem itself. We need to recognize that education extends far beyond classrooms.
Young people should be included in decision-making processes on all levels. This is the only way they can champion in building a sustainable future for all of us.
This year, UNICEF launched the Generation Unlimited global initiative. It brings together governments, businesses, academics, international organizations, NGOs and, most importantly, young men and women themselves. In collaboration with youth, we create solutions to common problems.
As part of this initiative, we extend programs that have already proved to be successful in other countries. From a program in Argentina that connects students from remote and rural areas with teachers via the Internet. To a job-shadowing program in South Africa that brings together young women and mentors in innovative science technologies.
Ukrainian youth have great potential. We learned about this first-hand, when with the European Union, we launched UPSHIFT Ukraine in Kharkiv. This program supports social innovations to develop transferable professional skills of teenagers.
All our successful initiatives prove that we should work together with young people on an equal footing. We should trust their ideas, and invest in their opportunities.
The future does not belong to us. But in our hands is the ability to make everything for young people to learn with no fear and to gain skills that are appropriate for the changing world.
This is their time. Their turn to run the world. Their unlimited future.
Lotta Sylwander is the UNICEF Representative in Ukraine.
