Last week, I had the opportunity to attend The Ontario Council for International Cooperation’s Global Citizens Forum 2013, which focused on the current state of the world’s youth in today’s society. This was an amazing event and it definitely opened my eyes to the large number of young people taking action for global social justice. The first day of the two-day event started off with a bang as speakers Rita Karakas, from Canada World Youth, and Jennifer Corriero, from TakingITGlobal, took to the podium to reach out and engage young people with current topics.
The first speaker, Rita (who claimed she was allergic to injustice) has worked to make a global difference for and with youth for most of her lifetime. She encouraged the audience to think critically and spoke about the significant global “youth bulge” where one in five people globally are between the ages of 15 and 24. Rita explained how our aboriginal population in Canada almost directly mirrors the population of youth in developing countries in terms of poverty, sobriety, youth education, access to education and income. Rita also spoke about youth unemployment overshadowing the average of the rest of the population, and how this bad situation has become even worse because of lingering economic crisis. Many countries have developed youth policies that help to combat these issues. Surprisingly, Canada is not there. There is no policy, provincially or federally, that speaks to the role of youth engagement and leadership.

Jennifer Corriero has been named a “Young Global Leader ” by the World Economic Forum
The next speaker was Jennifer, who has been named a “Young Global Leader ” by the World Economic Forum. She encouraged youth to ask themselves some critical questions in order to continue to grow and expand their knowledge. She also asked the audience to think about how the role of youth has changed over the years, sharing her own interesting thoughts on the subject as well.
On the second day, the forum opened with a panel of international youth participants from several different countries such as Jamaica, Columbia and Nicaragua. They spoke about what they are doing to combat some of the issues they are facing and some of the results of their efforts, as well as what youth are facing in other countries. They talked about some of the successful results from different organizations such as the Jane Goodall Institute of Canada, which runs conservation programs with a holistic approach. After they were done speaking, the panel opened up the floor for questions and discussion.
In the afternoon schedule for both days, those who attended this part of the forum (many being aid workers) had an opportunity to participate in several different workshops. These workshops were based on topics that pertained to youth advocacy and health. Fortunately for me, I had the opportunity to attend a few of them.

Sculpting themselves in a positive way!
One of the most memorable to me was called “Acting out Conscience using Participatory Theater to Develop Global Citizenship Skills”, and was put on by Mixed Media Company Theater, facilitated by Simon Malbogat. This workshop taught people how to use creativity to reflect critically on global systems and their social, environmental and cultural consequences.Firstly, Simon explained the different negative personality traits that people possess, using masks to portray and demonstrate these unsavory traits. I felt this presentation really spoke to the youth who attended. In one of the activities, attendees were asked to sculpt themselves into a position that demonstrated what a good advocate for change looked like. The participants came up with some very interesting stances to represent themselves in a positive way. It was a very interesting exercise involving the arts and, in a sense, showed youth how to be more confident in the way they present themselves as advocates of change. Being a huge fan of theater and art, I learned a lot from this workshop and certainly enjoyed how engaging it was.
Another interesting workshop was the “First Aid Includes Mental Health” workshop. It was geared toward educating aid workers who travel overseas. Emphasizing to them the importance of identifying mental health problems and teaching them to conduct mental health first aid workshops themselves. This workshop really underlined the importance of mental health training and raised awareness on how poor mental health can negatively affect everyone in a workplace. Some disorders can be very debilitating and directly interfere with productive employment and education. Both workshops were very well facilitated and provoked a lot of positive discussion amongst the youth who attended them.
At the Closing Ceremony, Newmarket-Aurora MP Lois Brown gave a very inspiring final speech. Following the ceremony, young people reflected on the event and talked amongst each other, many of them claiming they had made several new friends and contacts, learned important information at the workshops, and walked away feeling confident that they could be better advocates of change when representing youth in today’s society. I would strongly encourage any young person to attend any forum similar to this one because there is so much to learn about youth advocacy and so many important youth voices to be heard.