Youth and the MDGs

Was resource speaker yesterday at the forum on Millennium Development Goals and Youth Empowerment held under the auspices of the I-Transform Campaign with YouthLead Philippines as convenor. The activity was attended by more than a hundred participants representing some nine youth organizations from within and outside Bohol.

Let me thank John Maraguinot for giving me the opportunity to present the Poverty Database Monitoring System (PDMS) as a pro-poor targeting tool developed in Bohol and used in several countries for the past ten years as part of efforts to pursue the MDGs.

Happy that the differently abled were represented at the youth gathering. Someone was interpreting in sign language the proceedings, quite a refreshing sight to see. We showed a video on how PDMS is used in the Pacific. Due to limited time, we were not able to show the video on how young people in Bohol conduct the household survey to produce the household poverty database.

As usual, we were surprised to learn that most of the participants, who were young students and college graduates, seemed not familiar with the MDGs. Same with the other young audiences before. The 15-year period to attain supposedly the MDGs and there still so many young people out there who are not aware about the MDGs.

This is something that has to be addressed in current global discussions on how to generate more involvement from the youth in the post-2015 MDG program. Let me share this quote from the website of the Social Development Division of the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs (DESA):

Young people between the ages of 15 and 24 represent approximately 18 per cent of the global population, or nearly 1.2 billion people. Many youth remain marginalized from social and economic opportunities, with limited access to essential resources. Eighty-seven per cent of the youth population live in developing countries, and nearly 45 per cent of all youth globally living on less than 2 dollars a day. Youth are among the most vulnerable of all persons the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) aim to reach. Whether it is poverty, hunger, lack of education, maternal mortality, unemployment, environmental degradation or HIV/AIDS, the impact on young people can be far greater than on their older counterparts. This is because many young people often lack access to information, schooling, social influence and basic rights, and are often overlooked in national development agendas. Therefore, young people’s participation and inclusion in efforts to achieve all of the goals are crucial to ensure a successful and sustainable outcome. (Italics mine).

The path taken by the I-Transform Consortium is a step in the right direction. It lays the foundation for greater youth participation during this period and beyond in the continuing pursuit of the MDGs as a common development agenda for all nations and races.

The strategy for the youth organizations to work with local communities or local sectoral groups, such as those with the differently abled, is both practical and appropriate. BLDF, which owns the copyright for PDMS, is prepared to discuss with the Consortium or its convenor, YouthLead Philippines, on how to make available the software and its survey methodology to any group willing to plan and implement local catalyst projects addressing deprivations in local communities.