Engaging young people as active change-makers
GenU will support young people as change-makers and co-creators of solutions that improve their lives and their communities, by massively scaling-up proven youth engagement & volunteering initiatives globally.
The 1.8 billion young people in the world today are a crucial resource for innovative change towards a more equal and sustainable world. Throughout history, civically engaged young people have proven to be a powerful force for change. In recent years we have witnessed youth-led movements that have successfully gained international attention and challenged established practices within public, private, and not-for-profit organisations and institutions.
The COVID-19 outbreak has created a climate that poses a colossal threat, now and in the future, to young people and their families. Young people are disproportionally impacted during and post COVID-19 crisis, particularly those in emergency and humanitarian situations whose living conditions will be further exacerbated by the pandemic.
Enabling the voice, agency, and action of youth as identifiers of solutions for problems affecting themselves and others is critical. At GenU, we will work to support young people as change-makers and co-creators of solutions that improve their lives and their communities. We will achieve this by massively scaling-up proven youth engagement & volunteering initiatives globally to create a constructive and systematic engagement mechanism for young people to build equal and prosperous post-COVID-19 societies.
Together with public and private sector partners, GenU will seek to provide assistance, brokering, and funding to ‘turbocharge’ existing initiatives where young people are enabled to achieve their full potential. We will provide them with an avenue to solve issues affecting themselves and others in both development and humanitarian settings during and post the COVID-19 crisis. The focus will be on selected initiatives that have shown promising results for scale-up.
