Youth sdgs

Involving the Youth as Agent of Change

WITH the rise of New Urban Agenda, UCLG ASPAC has intensively advocated local governments to embrace inclusivity in implementing local development. The term inclusion refers to the involvement of various groups in communities and accommodating their needs in the planning of local development; youth group included. This encouraged UCLG ASPAC to collaborate with Indonesian Youth for SDGs to conduct a casual discussion taking theme Youth, SDGs, and Urban Lifestyle on October 14, 2017 at City Hall, Jakarta Capital Region. The discussion invited three young presenters: Maurice Shawndefar as the representative of UNDP Indonesia, Achmad Firas Khudi from UCLG ASPAC Secretariat, and Gina Karina from ICLEI Office Indonesia.

The discussion revolved around the topic on how youth can contribute to the attainment of SDGs. Maurice highlighted that youth could contribute in

localizing SDGs by firstly understanding it. Youth could also participate in activism and advocacy by organizing and campaigning both online and offline.

In the discussion, Firas brought up to the table discussion about reducing youth unemployment through public private partnership in Indonesia. He put emphasis on the essential role of local government to initiate PPP project in sector that utilize large number of workers and to encourage youth network and activist into development process to address youth unemployment issues at local level.

In this occassion, Gina Karina, mentioned about the sustainable urban lifestyle for youth in Jakarta. To create sustainable urban transformation, it needs multi-dimensional and radical change. It can be from demand-push, usually by the youth or supply-pull from the business government. For her, youth is the agent of change.

All of participants and speakers had fruitful discussion during the question and answer session. Some questions including on urbanization problem, sustainable cities, investment, youth unemployment and urban citizen lifestyle were raised by participants.

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