Youth voices at the heart of Transforming Education
What young people have to say about the future of education
Members of the Generation Unlimited Young People’s Action Team have been active delegates and participants in the conversation on Transforming Education ahead of September’s summit in New York.
In June, four YPAT members joined the Schools2030 Global Forum in Tanzania, together with GenU representatives. Similarly in June, Precious Agaecheta, another YPAT member, attended the Transforming Education Pre-Summit – along with GenU Global Head of Programmes, Urmila Sarkar – to elevate young people’s ideas and demands. In July, Generation Unlimited (GenU) co-hosted a side event at the High-Level Political Forum, at which two members of the YPAT members spoke as panellists on the importance of education financing. Each young person participated in discussions on themes around the future of education, including measurement, gender inclusivity and private sector engagement. Photos, videos and reflections from these events can be found below.
Presence at Schools2030 Global Forum
GenU attended the Schools2030 Global Forum in the United Republic of Tanzania, together with four YPAT members from the Eastern and Southern Africa region: Praise Majwafi (South Africa), Anastase Ndagijimana (Rwanda), Karabo Mokgonyana (South Africa) and Priscilla Kusuro (Uganda). Below, Priscilla reflects on her time at the conference.
I’m Priscilla Kusuro, a gender activist from Uganda, and I am excited to share my great experiences at the Schools2030 Global Forum, which was held in Dar es Salaam, from 21 to 23 June 2022.
It was such a privilege for me to participate in a global event on behalf of GenU. Meeting with other GenU members was the best part of the forum. The other GenU members and I seemed like long-time friends – we got along very well. Urmila Sarkar, GenU Global Head of Programmes and Nadi Albino, GenU Deputy Director, Partnerships, made it easy for us all, as they were very supportive and ensured that we were given opportunities to take up spaces at the conference, both in our round-table and the main conference discussions.
To sum up, Praise, Karabo, Anastase and I worked as a team to ensure that GenU was fully represented, given the fact that we were not only representing GenU but also the entire youth population.
The Schools2030 conference taught me a number of lessons: patience, commitment, respect for diversity, the importance of inclusiveness in planning any event, respect for culture, respect for others’ opinions, and, above all, the ability to always try to occupy spaces. Young people still have a lot to do if their voices are to be heard. We were among a few youth present at the event, out of almost 500 delegates who were discussing issues affecting young people. This certainly calls for greater involvement of young people in the decision-making especially when the decision directly affects young people themselves.
I also learned that education is still a problem in all countries in Africa, a situation that calls for collective thinking on how to incorporate innovation into education. Too often a lack of resources translates to lack of opportunity to be innovative. Closing this resourcing gap is essential to transforming education.
Perspectives at Transforming Education Pre-Summit
At the Transforming Education Pre-Summit, held at the Paris headquarters of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) from 28 to 30 June 2022, Precious Agaecheta elevated youth voices on the importance of youth representation in decision-making. The young female leader from Nigeria, who is a YPAT member, participated in the Youth Declaration consultation and also addressed the main stage session attended by education ministers from more than 140 countries.
She addressed the audience about her GenU YPAT experience stating “I serve as part of the sounding board of Generation Unlimited [through YPAT]. This means that, decision, programme implementation, design of activities that happen in Generation Unlimited has to go through young people. The essence of this is that it makes it effective and very importantly sustainable”, as young people are the ones who understand the challenges the most and able to contribute to the solution.
View a video of Precious addressing the audience of the main stage session.
At the Pre-Summit, GenU also helped organize the Private Sector Roundtable and key side events, such as for the Action Track 4: Digital Learning and Transformation, advocating for the important role of GenU’s public-private-youth partnership model in transforming education and scaling impact to reach the most marginalized young people.
High-Level Political Forum side event
On 12 July 2022, GenU co-hosted a High-Level Political Forum side event entitled ‘Financing the Futures of Education’ with the Global Partnership for Education.
This intergenerational dialogue included discussions of the barriers to education that have been exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic and how governments are working to support students to overcome those barriers and build resilient education systems.
The side event was aligned to the High-Level Political Forum’s 2022 theme, ‘Building Back Better from the Coronavirus Disease (COVID-19) while Advancing the Full Implementation of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.’ As such, the discussion focused on inclusive education in a COVID-19 context and how countries can transform their education systems to address the challenges that impede access to education. Conveying their knowledge and insights as part of the panel were two YPAT members with robust experience on inclusive education, Samanjar Chowdhury (Bangladesh) and Taibat Hussain (Nigeria).
View the recording of the session here.
