What is the best way to involve young people in the field or better in the art of policy making? Is there a magic formula apart from jumping into and joining a political party? What are the links, connections between leadership and policy making? How can the drive to action, the key pillar of any leadership-based activity, promote good and effective policy for the common good?
These are some of the questions that I and my "Partner in Adventure" Sushil Adhikari have been wondering about since we started The Good Leadership, a new initiative aimed at promoting positive leadership that, to us, inevitably also involves developing expertise and know-how.
Let's take, for example, the most threatening and daring issue the whole humanity is facing, climate change and with it, biodiversity loss. If the international community has developed awareness about this huge challenge and also the determination and commitment to take action, it is because of the efforts put up by young people around the world.
It worked out well because, while the decisions taken by the world leaders at global forums, like the climate and biodiversity' Conferences of Parties, are still far from what we desperately need, something is happening.
The massive and bold campaigns carried out by young climate activists around the world were an important testimony that what it requires to fight climate warming and preserve our mountains, oceans and forests is all about leadership. This leadership unfolded through positive, even if sometimes, disruptive though peaceful actions.
But how can we go to the next level, how to shift from awareness and campaigning towards real decision-making run and led by young people? What's the role of expertise? That's why we have partnered with Youth Action for Sustainable and Eco Nepal (YASEN), a local not-for-profit organization, with the idea of creating a Community of Practitioners entitled "COP 28 & Beyond".
The community of practitioners, in our case, is a group of young people, mostly studying at the bachelor and master's levels but also comprising of young professionals who have already graduated and are keen to know more about climate action holistically. That's why the focus of the initiative has been not only to discuss what just happened in Dubai during the COP 28 but also trying to link it with the global biodiversity agenda and also the ongoing discussions on establishing an internationally binding treaty on plastic. The whole idea is to facilitate peer to peer learning, helping the members of our community to acquire cutting edge skills on such issues.
While phase one of our initiative is fully centered on building the required knowledge, our members will then have to take action. For us, this means leading. They will do so by writing op-ed pieces and even, most importantly, by designing and delivering themselves what we call a "capacity building opportunity" for other peers.
So far, we have held four sessions of our community, with regular weekly meetings, and each time, a commitment on the part of the members to come to the next session with some new understanding that will be shared with others.
We are not fooling ourselves believing that a few weekly sessions can turn a young person into an expert, but our whole aim is to build the foundations, actually very solid building blocks, above which more knowledge on climate warming and biodiversity loss will be created. We hope that, in this way, a virtuous loop of peer-to-peer co-leadership and expertise creation can be generated sustainably.
It is going to be a long way, but ideally, we want to create a movement, a massive number of young people from Nepal and from around the Asia Pacific that are ready to lead by harnessing their knowledge and understanding about the most consequential issues humanity is facing.
Indeed, at The Good Leadership, we have already organised a Community of Practitioners on the Sustainable Development Goals and one, still ongoing, on Business and Human Rights, the latter a collaboration with the National Law College, a leading institution affiliated to Tribhuvan University.
Honestly speaking our mission is not easy, but it is a joy to see small groups of young people having fun while remaining fully committed to enhancing their leadership with learning and with action. Probably not all the members of these communities will be able to come up with quality op-ed pieces, and not all of them will become great facilitators and trainers, but what counts, at the moment, is to stay the course and be committed to the process.
Writing, as per my own experience, is a long-term process that you can improve step by step, effort after effort. The same would be for designing and delivering a course on climate and biodiversity or business and human rights. Both writing and organising a course are milestones towards the long-term journey of knowledge acquisition. Let's not forget that expertise is not built in a day, and leadership is far from only being able to master your own public speaking skills or having a natural-born charisma.
We are still at the beginning of this journey that wants to enable young people to be at the centre of positive actions and decisions that can change the society for the better. We do not want to build just climate or business and human rights champions.
The goal is to enable young persons to have a role in the society, a meaningful role that can help not only save the world but also make it better.
This is what leadership is all about, and understanding the nitty and gritty of vital policies that will affect our lives is an indispensable element to lead for the better. This is a mission that each youth, including the most disadvantaged and vulnerable, should be put in a position to strive for.
Galimberti is the co-founder of ENGAGE and of The Good Leadership
