The world needs promising youth leaders and inspiring youth leadership aspiring for global healing and sustainable peace.

By Saskia Troy and Simran Vedvyas.

It is time to tap into the passion, creativity, and ingenuity of all young people, and find ways to transform the community to be responsible by allowing inspiring young people to serve.  A sustainable and peaceful world with young people, their institutions’, and their guardians promising to follow ‘eco lifestyle’ supported by ‘all possible means’ is crucially essential to sooner or later achieve the dream of a Sustainable world.  A young fresh perspective by talented young leaders can invigorate the greatest holistic and sustainable approach needed to help develop creative and pragmatic solutions to the many challenges.

Simran Vedvya, is a 15 years old amazing youth leader from the United Arab Emirates who has been an ‘active environmentalist’, a ‘social campaigner’ and a ‘star student’ since a very young age.  As an expert in social media networking she fights every day for the cause of various international organizations including the Earth Charter and contribute to the empowering of youths around the world to be part of the construction of a more sustainable world.

“I aspire to share my experience, and indulge youth to raise more awareness and participate systematically and effectively in promoting environmental work, sustainability- the future we want and causes that must be addressed sooner than ever before with creative and innovative ideas.”  Simran Vedvyas

Another example of young leader is Princess Ogechi Ukaga who is Chapter Leader Children of the Earth Nigeria and Coordinator of Children of the Earth Africa. She believes a prerequisite for world peace is to strengthen the dialogue between today’s and tomorrow’s decision makers. She therefore actively fights in Nigeria to strengthen the dialogue between today’s and tomorrow’s decision makers.

 “We are following our own path to true and lasting peace which we believe starts within our own hearts. To truly transform our communities, our countries and the world is to begin transforming ourselves which is the way to sustainable unity within our world. We need to strive to prepare the ground for exceptional ideas and to inspire to concrete action, enriched by the critical voices of idealistic and courageous young people.” Princess Ogechi Ukaga,Chapter Leader Children of the Earth Nigeria

More and more children and youth are fostering the values of sustainability and find a way to act for the establishment of justice, peace and sustainable development within society. Nevertheless, they also need to be taught the skills to empower themselves, form global movements, participate within society and make sure their voices are being heart while at the same time making society more transparent and democratic.

Leaders in business, politics and civil society can create wealth while at the same time they can positively add value to the conservation and protection of the ecological world, having respect for other human beings and building on positive change in their own life. Socially responsible business can not only do well for the world around us but also for the development and the realization of the full potential of individual people. As it’s not always that easy to marry sustainability with making profits in order to develop socially responsible leaders within business and society we need to start teaching the youth of today already at a very young age about sustainable entrepreneurship and how to become a  social and environmental engaged leader.

According to Roebin Lijnis Huffenreuter from the Netherlands who is a trained philosopher and economist and has been working as a researcher and consultant at the DRIFT research institute, governance should put more attention on long-term altruistic behavior, moral motivations, circular processes, and fair distribution. More important, according to Roebin, sustainability requires abandoning the conventional economic view, and taking up more insights, methods, and models of other scientific disciplines. In other words economic development needs radical innovation, breaking with conventional patterns, thinking out-of-the box” and changing the game. Young people do not have the experience of doing things in conventional ways and therefore are able to generate change and renewal within the political, social and economic system.

In order to create a new generations of leaders for business and society we need to make sure that people of all ages, race, color of skin, sexual preference, gender, income class and other varieties have equal access to education. But there’s more needed than only the access to education for everyone. Developing inherent leadership skills within education for young people needs an ongoing dialogue between student and teacher, an interdependent relationship between theory and practice and a conscious and holistic learning.

“Provide all, especially children and youth, with educational opportunities that empower them to contribute actively to sustainable development.” The Earth Charter, Principle 14.a