This is the updated version of the Youth Rights Day letter with youth signatories appealing for people to join the movement.
The letter seeks to find all youth, youth advocates, and their organizations seeking social and environmental justice. We want for no one to feel left out in creating this movement. Please share it broadly: http://www.ucyottawa.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/Youth-Rights-Day-The-Generation.pdf
This is a temporary page providing an accumulation of ideas for the Youth Rights Day website currently under construction. Please send any recommendations to youthrightsday@gmail.com.
We need to make it very attractive to youth. Maybe the initial page could have boxes with different subjects. Like: education rights, LGTB rights, black rights, environmental rights…
Text of the letter seeking to find all youth, youth advocates, and their organizations seeking social and environmental justice. We want for no one to feel left out in creating this movement. Please share it broadly: http://www.ucyottawa.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/Youth-Rights-Day-The-Generation.pdf
Who Owns the Youth Rights Day Movement?
We appeal to everyone to own this movement. Talk it up and plan to host or participate in some activity on November 20th. The Day is the catalyst for a grassroots happening made by individuals. The catalyst, seen as an invitation to join a dance, has been extended by youth advocates who acknowledge that we have got to unite behind some common action to achieve our goals as quickly as possible. The common action is simply that we agree to do something on the Youth Rights Day that brings attention and support to our various projects, and by constantly talking it up. By coming together in this way, we can potentially gain the global attention necessary to create needed change in the time we’ve got.
What Does Participating In the Movement Involve
The Youth Rights Day Movement is conceived to be an enhancement, not an add-on to what people are already doing. It is to be seen as a tool to gain attention and support for all the great things being done by youth and advocates for youth. It seeks to apply the following two principles essential to successfully bringing about change:
– Work smarter, not harder.
– “United we stand. Divided we fall.”
By adding the Youth Rights Day to your conversations, we add credibility to what we are doing on behalf of youth to improve the lives of everyone. It says we are not alone. By planning to conduct some activity on Youth Rights Day that we would want to conduct anyway, we show solidarity with others who share our values. By coming together in this way, we can learn of others with whom to build alliances to more effectively pursue our more specific goals.
Youth Defined
Young people 30 and under are considered by the Youth Rights Day movement to be youth. Others under 40 who have been advocates for youth rights for years and who are still active advocates, are also thought of as falling within the category of youth. These are the people we have been waiting for. They are the ones rising up to make a future that is sustainable and equitable for everyone – a happy future.
Beyond Youth-Led/Adult-Supported
Youth-Led/Adult-Supported activities are categorized as second from the top rung on Hart’s Ladder of Youth Participation. It is still an open question as to whether the Youth Rights Day movement will operate from this rung or if its participants will strive to provide an example of the kinds of relationships that exist at the top of the Ladder. The top rung represents people of all ages working side-by-side as equal human beings to create a good society. An excellent quote to describe this kind of equality comes from Queensland Aboriginal Activists in 1970. They said, “If you have come to help me you are wasting your time, but if you have come because your liberation is bound up with mine, then let us work together.”
This article by Charles Orgbon III is one to consider when deciding which rung of the ladder to focus on for the Youth Rights Day movement. Charles was only 12 years old when he founded Greening Forward.
A Sustainable, Happy Future
We don’t have time for change to take time.
Youth have been described as too idealistic to be given a vote. Another way of looking at things is that adults have too much lost their idealism – too many have become complacent and compromised their humanity. Too often we hear adults defend their lack of action saying, “Change is happening, but it takes time.” This is barely true, and in some arenas not true at all. Look back at the high level thinking surrounding public education in the 1960s and early 70s. For example, the Ontario Government commissioned a report on public education titled “Living and Learning” that was published in 1968. It reflects a respect for children and youth beyond what we are seeing today. If the aim of education, as stated in the report, is “to further man’s unending search for truth,” then it might be argued that change in education has been undone during the intervening years. When students ask, “Why do we have to learn this?”, the answer in this day of high stakes testing is too likely to be, “Because it could be on the test.” The search for truth is lost in that kind of thinking. Students are coerced to study to get into university, not to seek truth. They are having their time stolen from them, made to do things that prevent them from even thinking about what is true. It is not idealistic for students to say, “I want to pursue truth. I want to be learning things that are meaningful to me.” By standing together, youth can reclaim their time for the things they consider to be important, the things that hold the promise of truth.
No Need to Fear Youth Seeking Truth
The Youth Rights Day creates the opportunity for youth to showcase all that they do in their search for truth, but this day is just a collective crescendo. It is be bring attention to all of their responsible and creative efforts throughout the years to make a difference. This short video will help to alleviate fears that youth can’t be trusted. The Youth Rights Day website can link to all sorts of other evidence that youth can not only be trusted, but that they are needed: https://youtu.be/H3EXpBWaZk0.
The purpose and history of the Youth Rights Day – to be developed
What does youth agency look like in education:
1. https://youtu.be/irHE6DvQKsk
2. https://www.unschoolingschool.com
3. https://youtu.be/RVLaXQWJjVo
4. https://youtu.be/o491XKevwyg
Youth as stewards of the planet:
1. https://www.teachthefuture.uk
2. https://www.theharmonyproject.org.uk
Why the urgency for our generation to act:
1. https://youtu.be/ySnhyH1LKU0