“Education facilitates economic development and contributes directly to the improvement of the lives of the most vulnerable people,” states Max Amanu, a member of the SDG4Youth Network, who has been selected to the 2023 European Youth Event (EYE) UN Youth Core Group. He shares information on his new mandate.
“As a young person coming from the Global South, education became my international visa to the world and opened doors for me to access the most important people and places in the world,” shares Max Amanu who hails from Uganda. He recently joined the 2023 EYE UN Youth Core Group, which is preparing the European Youth Event 2023, to be held on 9 and 10 June 2023 at the European Parliament in Strasbourg, France. He provides details on the 2023 EYE UN Youth Core Group stating, “It consists of 6 youth leaders and 13 representatives of UN agencies who are members of the UN Brussels Task Force on Youth. They are involved in the design, planning, coordination, and implementation phases of the UN activities, such as the UN panel event, during the conference.”
Max continues, “Youth representatives meet bi-weekly with representatives of UN entities to shape the agenda and finalize the scenario of the panel discussion and UN stand.” Following the event, the ideas, expectations and concerns from young people will be collected in the Youth Ideas Report distributed to all Members of the European Parliament.
Max also shares why transforming education is a key topic for such an international event, stating, “Transforming education is important for holistic systematic reform in the education ecosystem architecture and enables us to match the training and learning skills with the 21st century needs. Transforming Education draws us closer to achieving SDGs since SDG4 is connected with all other SDGs. It is important to help young people to acquire curiosity, creativity, flexibility, originality, direction, and team spirit for an increasingly complex world, it’s even more important to train them to be adaptors in the ever-changing world we are living in today. The European Youth Event is a regional platform that allows localizing the transforming education effort.”
For many years, Max has advocated for access to quality education and this new mission reinforces his passion: “I would like to be the voice of the young people from the global south, in working towards removing barriers to access to quality education, such as policies, infrastructure, and financial resources. After all, education gives hope, fulfills dreams, and eases mobility, which is key for personal, professional, and economic growth.”