Ms. Kit Miller has a Masters in Social Innovation and Sustainability from Goddard College. She served as the director of the M.K. Gandhi Institute for Nonviolence in Rochester, New York since 2009. Prior to that, she worked as the director/celebrator of Bay Area Nonviolent Communication in Oakland, California. Ms. Miller has been learning about nonviolence and organizing on its behalf for the past 26 years. She draws on Gandhian and Kingian nonviolence, as well as Nonviolent Communication and permaculture, for direction and daily practice. Ms. Miller sees herself as an educator/practitioner hybrid. In addition to using the Institute itself as a learning laboratory for principled nonviolence, she teaches and works on community projects related to restorative justice, sustainability, and antiracism in Rochester and elsewhere. She also has taught hundreds of groups worldwide and has spoken at the United Nations twice (in 2017 and 2018) sharing nonviolence with youth in the 21st century.
Event Title: Advancing Youth through Social and Economic Empowerment
Date: September 25, 2019
SPEECH
Importance of non-violence education and culture of peace for social empowerment of youth
The community is the native climate of the human spirit and face to face uses our whole brain to understand, empathize and learn from each other. Learning, connection, grieving, problem-solving and mourning are things we do in circles with children, youth and adults. Urgent need for training in conflict transformation to support the challenges that will arise regarding population change and resource use. Systemic thinking tools can be taught to people of all ages to understand how systems work and learn how the best people and groups can interact and impact systemic change. Understanding events through the lens of systemic thinking offers opportunities for perspective and intelligent action, rather than reactivity, fear or despair.
Mr. Nick Hatzoglou has a Post Graduate Certificate in Event Management from Victoria University. He is the Head of Community Projects with Football Victoria and has overall responsibility for the Indigenous, Multicultural, LGBTI+, and Disability projects. He ensures football clubs are safe, welcoming, and better reflective of all Australians. He is Australian-born with Greek heritage and has a passion for cultural diversity and sport. Mr. Hatzoglou combines experience gained within the multicultural sector, local government, Australian Football League, and Cricket Australia with his appreciation of the positive role sport plays in a vibrant contemporary Australia. He acknowledges the role sport contributes to nurturing community interaction, social harmony, and believes football can facilitate an essential role in developing people’s understanding of each other at a local, national, and international level. Previously, Nick has played a significant role in developing the Sunshine Heights Cricket Club, the most culturally diverse cricket club in the world), the AFL Peace Team, which brings together Palestinians and Israeli’s into one team, Sunshine Heights Western Tigers Football Club, and created the AFL Multicultural Program from scratch.
Event Title: Advancing Youth through Social and Economic Empowerment
Date: September 25, 2019
SPEECH
The role of sports for the social and personal development of youth
The question posed for me to address was The role of sports for the social and personal development of youth. I would like to approach this question by distilling the many learnings I have embraced in my personal and professional life. Having made all the mistakes, I find myself in a great position to pass on some advice and wisdom.
This will be summarised in 6 key areas
Promoting Wellbeing & Confidence
The importance of Mentoring
Sport can be a level playing field
Youth – leading projects
Promote a Growth Mindset
More Indigenous Engagement and respect
Promoting Wellbeing & Confidence
Sport helps with self-confidence, especially early on in life. It’s always easy to integrate into new environments using sport as the common interest. Sport when successful, improves relationships and makes people happier This is especially relevant for our youth. Sport can create opportunities and get you to the other side of the world. Football is a great gateway to navigating other cultures and countries.
The importance of Mentoring
Everyone should have a mentor/s. In a world where people hang out in virtual communities or are less engaged in a person to person sense, it is even more vital to have that important other you can share ideas with, ask questions and explore life skills.
My strong recommendation is for youth to have older mentors and older people to have youthful mentors. In this way everyone can learn from each other and foster creativity and build tool kits for life’s opportunities and challenges.
As Michael Mandalis said so powerfully upon receiving his recent Football Victoria Hall of Fame Award
“ I look around me and what do I see – Amazing people, amazing football players, I walked in here and I said yeah, It’s very important that we keep in touch, keeping in touch with the old and embrace the new and the new to embrace the old.
Sport can be a level playing field
In a world that’s increasingly unfair – with more disparity in distribution of income, sport seems to be one of a few things that gives everyone a level(ish) playing field. It can lift the poor and humble the rich.
In Australia, we have made giant strides in sport that better engages with under-represented groups such as Females, LGBTI+, Indigenous and Multicultural cohorts. Our sport, football can play a massive role in bridging the gap and we are on a positive pathway with this led by young people.
Youth – leading projects
We see Government inertia on many issues and a growing expectation from consumers to fill the void. Youth can make a stand as they are on climate change. Just last Friday in my hometown of Melbourne, young people were leading a march to bring more attention to climate change – Lets let our youth lead campaigns, invest in them and guide their journey.
Promote a Growth Mindset
We must promote a Growth mindset to our youth, where they can embrace challenges, build resilience, have pathways to mastery, learn and apply criticism and find lessons from others that lead to their success
More Indigenous Engagement and respect
In a world where your number of likes on a picture can determine your status – Instagram has removed the counter amid concerns it was creating pressure on users,
it’s time to connect with our Indigenous communities, these collectivists societies in my opinion hold the key to a more wholesome and resilient lifestyle. As my friend Craig Foster strongly advocates, Indigenous Australia will make a positive compelling impact on Australian Football if we can turn our collective attention to engaging them (both male and female) into our sport- allow them to take risks and boost our cultural intelligence and meaningful engagement of Indigenous People. Our youth can lead this engagement and break the cycle of despair and welfare
I want to finish by saying that getting young people active in sport is only the start. The real measure of our success lies in harnessing the power of sport and play to enhance wellbeing, to boost achievement and to help young people develop the life skills, and the toolkit which will help them to thrive, be happy and healthy.
At Football Victoria during this last year, we have built on the work of previous teams in developing and running successful programmes, continued to innovate new products and pioneered new ways of working to transform young people’s lives for the better.
Examples of how we have worked to enhance the social and personal development of youth are:
Created and promoted new core organisational values for our staff– Integrity, Inclusion, Respect, Unity and leadership.
Promoting Go Football– We still come across (too) many sports bodies, clubs and coaches at grassroots level who only see the world through the lens of ‘sport’, ‘winning’ and ‘performance’. They think that the whole world should support and play the real, traditional versions of their sport that they have been practising and training for ages. New social forms of football where the emphasis is on fun – Walking Football, Social Sevens, Fun Football, Soccer Mums and All Abilities programs provide welcoming environments for that critical mass of less talented and able participants that just want to play and have fun.
Indigenous Football– Employed an Indigenous young man to lead our football forays into better engagement with Indigenous young people. Building capacity and creating employment outcomes
Empowering African Australian communities – engaged with young people to capacity build them so they can play a leading role within their communities to feel better prepared for life through football, including further accreditation as coaches and referees and employment
Over the past 12 months, research continued to paint a concerning picture of young people’s wellbeing. Young people were increasingly likely to be obese, to be struggling with their mental health or feeling isolated and lonely.
We found that too many young people are:
Inactive– 82.5% of young people are not meeting CMO guidelines of more than 60 minutes of activity every day
Stressed– 92% of 15 to 16-year-olds suffer from exam stress
Lonely– 45% of young people aged 10-15 years old reported they felt lonely either some of the time or often
Lacking confidence– one in five girls told us that they lack confidence
Overweight– one in three children are overweight or obese by the final year of primary school
Unhappy– 27% of children aged 10-15 rated their happiness as low or medium
Struggling with mental health– one in eight young people aged 5-19 has at least one mental health disorder
Lacking opportunity– 760,000 young people in the UK aged 24-years-old (10.9%) are not in education, employment or training.
Meanwhile, evidence shows these issues are magnified for girls, young people from BAME (Black, Asian and minority ethnic) communities and young people facing disadvantage.
Alyson Neel serves as Policy and Advocacy Strategist for the UN Foundation’s Global Policy team, with journalism, policy design, and advocacy experience in Turkey, the United States, and most recently Myanmar. Neel has worked to shed light on and address many manifestations of gender inequity, including gender-based violence, sexual and reproductive health and rights, and the gender wage gap, with The Washington Post, UN Women, and the Offices of Louisiana Senator “JP” Morrell and U.S. Senator Tammy Baldwin. Neel recently returned to New York after spending 18 months in Yangon, Myanmar, where she supported a local women’s organization and authored a bilingual children’s book, Girl Power in Myanmar, about women rocking their communities across the country. Neel holds an MPA from Princeton University’s Woodrow Wilson School, and a BA in political communication from Louisiana State University.
Event Title: Advancing Youth through Social and Economic Empowerment
Date: September 25, 2019
SPEECH
UNA-USA Youth member participation in human rights mechanisms and UN Summits
Empowerment may be the first piece, and we are seeing more of this, but those in power actually release some of their power to allow young people at the table to be another. In the implementation and reporting of the Sustainable Development Goals, we know that multi-stakeholder participation remains a challenge. The good practices of VNR, VLR and 2019 opportunities will also be useful for implementing change. The United Nations Fund works specifically to empower young people through the Girl Up campaign and the UNA-USA grassroots network.
Executive Director Changing Destinations: Journey to Excellence, Inc., USA
Ms. Sasha E. Butler is the Executive Director of Changing Destinations: Journey To Excellence, Inc., located in Columbia, Maryland. She leads critical global education initiatives for school-community partnerships and the implementation of leadership, socio-emotional learning, community service, and global citizenship education programs. Previously, Ms. Butler held various leadership positions in New York within higher education institutions, community-based organizations, and the business industry. Ms. Butler also serves as an International Education Consultant and Strategist for InXcellence Consulting: Training & Coaching Solutions (1997). She provides professional development resources to educators in the United States, Uganda, and Nigeria. Ms. Butler is a member of the Harvard University GSE Think Tank on Global Education: Empowering Global Citizens equipping teachers and administrators to foster global competence in schools by co-constructing curriculum and devising strategies for systemic change. She is also a member of the World Council on Intercultural and Global Competence to promote intercultural understanding for a more peaceful and sustainable world.
Event Title: Advancing Youth through Social and Economic Empowerment
Date: September 25, 2019
SPEECH
Key priorities and challenges in access to quality education
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights makes clear that everyone has the right to education. Despite the progress made in increasing access and participation around the world, economic and social disparities remain a threat to this fundamental right. UNESCO Institute for Statistics (UIS) reported 200 million youth are out of school. Current challenges in access to quality education include lack of funding, inadequate infrastructure, overcrowded classrooms, and outdated learning materials. Adequate ongoing training resources are also an issue in high-poverty schools hindering teachers’ effectiveness and students’ ability to learn. Additionally, racial, gender, and disability discriminatory practices deny youth access to quality educational opportunities.
We must continue to work collaboratively and invest more responsibly within our local and global communities to eliminate these barriers and create opportunities for the next generation. To achieve the goal of advancing youth through social and economic empowerment we must establish clear priorities aligned with our mission. The United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) provide a framework for fostering innovation solutions. Quality Education (SDG 4) and Partnerships for Goals (SDG 17) are at the center of our four key priorities: Social Emotional Learning; Leadership Development; Community Services; and Global Citizenship. Support for youth-led initiatives is an essential component for achieving learning objectives and preparing youth for success inside and outside the classroom. School districts, higher education institutions, local, state, and federal governments, small businesses and large corporations must share the responsibility for equipping youth with the skills and knowledge needed to become leaders and global citizens by creating grassroots, multi-stakeholder platforms where youth are given opportunities to lead.
Shared power is an important core value which motivates young people and teaches them to think critically about the world around them. They bring a fresh perspective on addressing challenges and generating innovative ideas. Youth are key to achieving the SDGs when empowered to lead and develop confidence to act and mobilize others toward a more equitable and sustainable future.
Director of Operations International Youth Leadership Institute
Event Title: Advancing Youth through Social and Economic Empowerment
Date: September 25, 2019
SPEECH
Youth as stakeholders in the implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals: Advocacy, awareness-raising, and capacity building
The mission of the International Youth Leadership is to nurture a new generation of visionary leaders from the African diaspora who, inspired by their rich African heritage, are committed to leaving a legacy in the world. It is important for youth to be given the opportunity to express and flex their leadership capabilities and the International Youth Leadership Institute does this cultivation of leadership by introducing the concept of being a global citizen to youth who are rising ninth graders to 12th grade. The vision of the International Youth Leadership Institute is Every day, youth of African descent are assuming leadership roles in making the world a better place, wherever they are. Leaders of the the IYLI will be in multiple places simultaneously creating and generating innovative ideas and solutions to some of today’s most nuanced issues.
International Youth Leadership Institute was founded in 1989 by two African American men by the name of Keith Brown, who worked in Africa as a Peace Corps Volunteer, and Dr. Micheal Webb, who worked on education development in Africa. When the two men returned to their home city of New York, they asked themselves how can more brown and black youth experience travel as an educational and leadership tool. By encouraging young Brown and Black youth to actively engage with their communities, both local and global they are furthering the mission of some of the SDGS. Through CSDPs, or Community Service Development Projects, youth are able to identify issues in their communities and then tackle them throughout the school year. Some past projects have been focused on eliminating violence, mental health awareness, urban farming, fundraising initiatives, and gender equity. The Community Service Development projects, then culminate in our Summer Heritage Program where youth travel to South Americans or African nations where they are then able to interact with municipalities, public officials, various non governmental organizations and bridge cultural relations between themselves and host country nationals, and conducting ethnographic research reflecting the socio-economic and political climate of that specific Summer Heritage Program. The amazing thing about having youth as decision makers is that they aren’t corrupted by being categorized or conditioned to operate within boundaries of bureaucracies. They have all the energy and desire to make change a reality. Thank you.
Question from audience participant: I heard you say a lot of about work in Africa but you didn’t really mention what specifically it is that the program does. Thank you for your question and I’m glad that you asked. We have Senegalese counterparts that run our Senegalese program in country. They (Senegalese Group Leaders) are our peers, recruiting, training, and preparing our Senegalese fellows for the Summer Heritage program. We also have capacity building meetings every month with our counterparts, bringing them update on program development and building leadership capacity for partnership development with in-country. Outside of this, we also partner with organizations in Senegal. Our biggest
partner is REDES, a non-governmental organization that operates in the Sahel region, working closely with residents in rural areas to cultivate sustainable solutions to food in-security, deforestation, and agricultural degradation. I hope that helped to answer your question, thank you.
Question from audience participant posed to Sasha E Butler: I attend Columbia and I feel like a lot of people in my generation do not care about many of the issues facing today’s society. How do I engage people my own age to care about some of the issues mentioned today?
I would like to add to that. Firstly I am so honored to be here on this panel with such a diverse panel with so much experience. But I am your peer, I just turned 25 and I’m up here trying my best to make changes in the areas where I can. We are so consumed with networking in a very vertical way but we need to become more familiar networking in a more linear way. Ask yourself the question before you ask others, because what you will find is that there will be a lot of commonalities in the answers because at the end of the day we are all human. What you’ll find is that a lot of what interests you also connects and resonates with others.
