CHIKASAMBA PRESENTS AT 9TH UNESCO YOUTH FORUM

The conference offered a great opportunity for young people from all walks of life to engage each other on global issues, challenges affecting the world, and also share ideas on how best we can shape the world for sustainable change and development.

Among other issues, there were discussions centered on issues of climate change, education, human rights, sexual and reproductive health, gender, information and communication technology (ICT), industrial development, global citizenship, poverty and economic development, and diversity and culture.

In his presentation, Chikasamba spoke on the need to acknowledge climate as a co-existing cultural heritage and to recognize that the way to preserve local knowledge and cultures is through climate change mitigation, adaptation and transformation. 

Chikasamba also addressed the need for global networking among the youth. “We need to create a bridging capacity for young men and women from different continents by establishing intercontinental social innovation incubators that will produce social start-ups with empowering knowledge, skills and experience”.

In his report, Chikasamba observed that Africa was under-represented at the UNESCO Youth Forum, despite the continent being largely affected by the challenges discussed at the forum. “It would be ideal to devise a mechanism that would see Africa sending a good number of representatives so as to enhance the voices from the continent and experience sharing between the developed community and Africa,” he notes.