Youth Empowerment: Why Is It Necessary for a Nation's Development?
The youth of a country strike a vital role in building social coherence, economic prosperity, and political stability inclusively and democratically. As the young are the social actors of change and process, it is very important to involve the youth in empowering the nation.
What is Youth Empowerment?
The term "Youth empowerment" is defined as a technique where the youth are encouraged to take charge of their lives by addressing specific concerns, accessing resources, and recasting their consciousness. As a result, youth gain the ability and authority to make decisions and implement change in their individual lives and society. Therefore, encouraging youth to perform and achieve greatness and make an inordinate impact on their society is a prioritized task of a country.
Role of Youth in Shaping India's Future
With every third person being a youth aged between 10 and 24 in India, investment in young people and adolescents has become even more critical. A passionate attachment to moral values and national pride should be encouraged and supported by providing quality healthcare, standard education, skill-building, employment creation and opportunities, good governance, and empowerment to the youth in achieving the progress and development of the nation.
The supreme value of the youth is incalculable and indescribable. The empowerment of youth is the key to a self-reliant India. Young people are important as future voters, decision-makers, and productive citizens. Their health and well-being, therefore, are critical for their future.
Youth empowerment can restrain the rate of poverty to an enormous extent if and when harnessed meticulously. One of the key factors is skill development. When youth is equipped with the necessary skills, they can utilize such skills to assist others as valuable members of society. This will, in turn, contribute to the increase in employability and add to the nation's development. Furthermore, youth empowerment through social innovation and entrepreneurship has incredible potential to solve issues at a grassroots level if youth are provided with powerful platforms to connect and act.
What are the Existing Problems Related to Youth Empowerment?
However, our young population faces challenges that have been accentuated by the pandemic. For instance, anaemia, child marriages, and teenage pregnancies have increased. Mental health has also become a significant concern amongst the youth as they are worried about their tomorrow. Moreover, the transition to secondary education and employment demonstrates persistence in challenges. In addition, the country-wide closure of educational institutions has impacted millions of children enrolled in school, further restricting mobility and access to services for economically disadvantaged adolescents. Although these changes will have a long-term impact on shaping India's future if necessary, steps need to be taken today.
Below are a few reasons why youth empowerment is crucial:
Investing in youth will pave the path for their development and sustain the efforts to achieve India's development. Prioritizing their needs and aspirations is the key to the overall socio-economic and demographic development. Having a large young population gives a large window of opportunity for the youth that needs to be leveraged while harnessing their potential remains a massive challenge.
It will also be important to invest in youth engagement and leadership with financial investments. Bringing young people to the centre, including them in decision making, and ensuring their participation in formulating youth appropriate policies and programs will ensure that they are equally invested in their well-being. India will succeed only if the young invest in their self-care.
Humanity Welfare Council's Programs and Projects to Empower Youth
Notwithstanding the challenges at hand, we at Humanity Welfare Council, whose Mission is 2030 Developed Nation, strongly believe in youth empowerment and what they can do for our country. Because of that, we make sure that we do what we can to give the youth the push that they need to realize their full potential. Therefore, we implement programs and projects that enable the youth to develop and be leaders.
We have implemented various projects to ensure holistic development for the children and youth that we meet:
Project Litindia
Community Libraries in rural India. Recognizing education as one of the approaches to empowering youth, we make sure that we educate the children under our care by establishing libraries in rural areas where there is no access to education and learning. We have established 8 community libraries so far where interested individuals can access this educational space to gain their world knowledge.
Project Global Cure (PGC) Interventions
Youth empowerment also signifies the well-being of the youth. Through PGC, we provide medical support to the youth deprived of it in case of emergencies. In addition, we conduct events on health awareness among the youth of India.
Health and Medical Services
PGC, our Care Centres facilities, provides primary preventive medical care, consultations, and treatments to ensure our youth's optimum health condition.
Skills Development
We provide leadership training and literacy training. We ensure that we also nurture youth's values and personalities as part of our youth empowerment interventions via Project Litindia and Project Greybook.
Check out our other Projects to learn more about our initiatives.
What You Can Do?
You can be the hope of our future leaders by uniting with us in our cause and supporting our efforts to empower our youth through education, healthcare, skill development, etc. In addition, you can share and send donations to help us in our endeavours.
Together, we can ensure that our youth are being honed into the leaders they are.
In India today, emphasis should be made to systematically urge today's youth for the country and society. We all should own the responsibility to play leading roles in the country's welfare.