Thursday, May 9, 2013

Questioning: The Youth Movement

For the last six years I have been involved with different youth organizations and network in one form or the other. Starting out as a volunteer to leading a recognized youth organization gave me various experience and opportunities to work at different capacities. But lately I have been questioning the whole youth movement and its course. I am in no position to comment on the political youth wings as I hardly have any experience on this area except to base assumptions on literature. And the literature that I had gone through might be biased in some aspect which is why I am only in the position to talk about the youth organizations/networks with which I have experienced. Time and again we hear the stories of young people leaving the organization and forming another organization or even networks and taking away all the projects and donor. Is youth movement an income source to young people and are we looking for job within youth organizations and networks? I am amazed at the amount of growing youth organizations and more precisely youth networks. But what amazes me is the corruption going on within these organizations and networks and the amount of money spent by donor agencies and ministry in these organizations even when they are aware of the on going misuse of power and resources. The young people who seem to be idealist and are seen on the streets with anti-corruption slogans and banners are the most corrupted. The board members employed as consultants and only person in the organization going everywhere from a small street event in Kathmandu to the high level meetings in New York is not a new thing in Nepali youth organizations. The practice of knowledge, information sharing and leadership transformation is almost rare in most of the youth organizations. Young people are insecure of their colleagues, tend to hide information/opportunities and are in constant look out to seek opportunity for themselves and the young people in general are left out. The policies, the opportunities and the programs never reach out to those young people who are to be benefited by all these initiatives aimed at youth empowerment and these young people have no other option than to leave the country in search of foreign employment. With majority of the young people leaving country as cheap laborers, young politicians following the steps of the corrupt politicians and the so called youth activist following the trend of corrupted development sector, I am sorry to sound pessimistic but I just can't see the silver linings right now.