Fires of Spring

August 12 is International Youth Day:

Aditha DISSANAYAKE

In the central place of every heart there is a recording chamber. So long as it receives messages of beauty, hope, cheer and courage, so long are you young - Douglas MacArthur

Youth in Sri Lanka

Sri Lanka has a five million youth population amounting to 26% percent of the total population. Each year about 150,000 and 130,000 students leave school education system after sitting for the General certificate of Education (GCE) Ordinary Level(O/L) and GCE Advanced Level(A/L) examinations respectively. Hence 92% of the youth is in the process of seeking productive employment opportunities.

The Ministry of Youth Affairs and Skills Development formulates national policies and implements youth development programmes to develop youth as future leaders by providing necessary vocational and technical training, developing their entrepreneurial and leadership skills, and enhancing their socio cultural activities.

In his characteristic fashion, Mark Twain when he was asked to deliver a lecture to a group of young girls said “being told I would be expected to talk here, I inquired what sort of talk I ought to make. They said it should be something suitable to youth--something didactic, instructive or something in the nature of good advice. Very well. I have a few things in my mind which I have often longed to say for the instruction of the young; for it is in one’s tender early years that such things will best take root and be most enduring and most valuable.”

The advice he gives though, turns the conventional lecture on its head. Among other things he suggests the best advice he could give to youth is that you should “always obey your parents, when they are present.”

In contrast, Steve Jobs in his “Stanford Commencement Speech” advised young people to make the best of their lives, because Death keeps drawing closer. “Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life’s change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. “ said Jobs. “Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true.”

What exactly is Youth? Called the Salad Days of one’s life by some, , teenage years, adolescence and juvenescence by others, to G K Chesterton“Youth is the period in which a man can be hopeless. The end of every episode is the end of the world.”.“Youth would be an ideal state if it came a little later in life” said the English poet, Herbert Asquith while Oscar Wilde explained “To get back one’s youth one has merely to repeat one’s follies”.

According to Douglas MacArthur, “People grow old only by deserting their ideals. Years may wrinkle the skin, but to give up interest wrinkles the soul. You are as young as your faith, as old as your doubt; as young as your self-confidence, as old as your fear; as young as your hope as old as your despair. In the central place of every heart there is a recording chamber. So long as it receives messages of beauty, hope, cheer and courage, so long are you young. When your heart is covered with the snows of pessimism and the ice of cynicism, then, and then only, are you grown old. And then, indeed as the ballad says, you just fade away.” “Youth has no age” said Pablo Picasso.

The United Nations though, gives clear age limits and defines youth as persons between the ages of 15 and 24. Yet, United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) also states “that young people are a heterogeneous group in constant evolution and that the experience of ‘being young’ varies enormously across regions and within countries.”

With the intention of encouraging young people to dedicate themselves to fostering progress, including the attainment of the United Nations (UN) Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), which seek to eliminate a multitude of social ills, ranging from extreme poverty and hunger to maternal and infant mortality to lack of access to education and health care, for all by 2015, the United Nations celebrates the youth of the world on International Youth Day, every year.

An awareness day meant as an opportunity for governments and the society to draw attention to youth issues worldwide in honour of International Youth Day, Concerts, workshops, cultural events, and meetings involving national and local government officials and youth organizations take place around the world, on this day. The first International Youth Day was observed on August 12, 2000.

The day was endorsed as such in its resolution 54/120, by the United Nations General Assembly, on December 17, 1999, following the recommendation of the World Conference of Ministers Responsible for Youth held in Lisbon on August 8-12 ,1998. It was proclaimed that August 12 of each year be declared International Youth Day.

In its resolution proclaiming the International Year of Youth, the General Assembly called on governments, civil society, individuals and communities worldwide to support activities on local and international levels to mark the event.

The theme chosen for International Youth Day 2012 – Building a Better World: Partnering with Youth – is a global call to action for young men and women, as well as other stakeholders around the world, to develop and engage in partnerships with and for youth towards building a better world.

“There is something very particular about young people, not just that they have time. Walter Brueggemann writes in The Pro­phetic Imagination about the two elements of prophetic vision. One is criticality, recognition of the world’s pain. Second is hope, recognition of the world’s possibilities.

Young people come of age with a critical eye and a hopeful heart. It’s that combination of critical eye and hopeful heart that brings change. That’s one reason why so many young people were and are involved in movements for social change.”

International Youth Day is a superb opportunity to not only celebrate the huge positive impact young people have on society but also to take a chance to encourage it amongst the generations to come.

May the youthful fires of spring burn bright throughout the world! Not only on International Youth Day, but forever.

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