A quick overview and insight into my work. OYEA works to encourage youth participation in communities. The organisation focuses heavily on volunteerism, community work and the environment. However, due to my personal involvement with several other areas of youth work, I have realised the importance of lobbying for youth to become more involved in the decision making process, whilst ensuring that OYEA maintains its direct community involvement. It must be noted that early on OYEA experienced amazing growth, with approximately 100 members, but that quickly dwindled into a group of, maybe, 10 really active persons. My focus has always been on encouraging quality work as opposed to quantity. "Encouraging youth engagement in local communities and youth involvement in decision making processes through international collaborations and networking with direct involvement from young people in Trinidad and Tobago." But WHY You Ask? Young people form a large part of the world’s population. Therefore, they are largely affected by the decisions taken by community and world leaders. Young people are intelligent, innovative, and capable of making decisions in tandem with the current decision makers. Also, young people can sometimes be unconcerned about the major issues that affect the world, which leads to an overall lack of interest in local and international issues. Hence, it is necessary to direct their attention to such issues. Oh really? But HOW? Online discussions and collaboration through established youth networks have been extremely useful in ensuring that the largest cross-section of young people are able to contribute to collaborative sessions. It is also important to encourage youth action, via small community projects, in order to pull young people into an arena that they may not be exposed to. Say WHAT? We are able to facilitate dialogue, which places us in a unique position to lobby established decision makers locally and internationally.
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