21st Century and Youth Empowerment
What is Youth Empowerment?
Youth empowerment can be defined as a process where people gain the ability and authority to make informed decisions and implement change in their own lives and the lives of other people. It is a means of encouraging youths to do great things for themselves and also to make great impact in their society.
As youths, you are at the center of absolute strength. You think big, hope for the best and envision a better tomorrow, therefore making continuous efforts to turn your dreams into reality.
Before going down to the need for Youth Empowerment in the 21st Century, It is important to properly understand what Youth Empowerment is all about.
What Does it Mean to ‘Empower’ Youth?
To truly empower youth, our society has to be very intentional about the way youth are incorporated into communities and organizations. Empowering youth means to:
- Include youth in decision-making processes
- Honor the youth voice
- Understand and implement their honest opinions and ideas
- Be willing to share your adult power and privilege in order to make the community a better place for both young people and adults alike
Below are a few reasons why youth empowerment is important:
1. Poverty Eradication: Youth empowerment can curb the rate of poverty to a large level. One of the keys to empowering the youth is with skill development. When a youth is equipped with essential skills, he or she can utilize them to feed, assist others, and even invest for future use, aiding the nation economically. This will in-turn contribute to the increase in employability and add to the GDP of the nation.
2. Improved Standard of Education: Empowerment can help youth to understand the importance of education that leads to social improvement of the country. The empowered youths can donate educational facilities to primary, secondary and even to tertiary institutions. Empowering the youths academically accelerates the spirit of patriotism in the education sector. The empowered youths know the importance of education. This is why many individuals issue scholarships to the students because they understand the value of education due to the empowerment, which was given to them academically. Education exposes people to know what they did not know before.
3. Good Governance: When the youths are empowered, they empower the masses, thereby paving path for a better future. To build a better tomorrow, we need to nurture the youths of today.
4. Crime reduction and National Security: Empowerment ensures that youth has the necessary skill to sustain a livelihood, preventing him to adopt the path of crime.
5. Employment Creation: This is another importance of youth empowerment. A youth empowered society will not seriously suffer from the problem of unemployment that many nations are battling with in the current time. A skillful youth is a job creator.
