What is the Youth Council?
The Youth Council was created four months after the birth of the Youth Empowerment Circle, with the goal of truly putting the leadership and strategic decisions of the Circle in the hands of the youth themselves. The Council is made up of young changemakers under the age of 25 from around the world, and is selected for six-month terms. They convene regularly to determine the best approaches and opportunities for the Circle to address topics such as youth rights, health and wellbeing, and education. Additionally, Council members have the unique opportunity to shape a growing community of youth organizations and policy-making institutions around the world, and to serve as ambassadors for the Circle at global events.
Useful links:
How were they selected?
We enlisted the support of each of the Circle Co-Leads to assemble an esteemed jury of individuals addressing Youth Empowerment. We are committed to ensuring that the diversity of the Council is reflected in the diversity of the jury (gender, nationality, ethnicity etc).
A big thank you to our international jury for engaging in such a difficult selection process:
Asha Murphy, Founder of Edufy
Bethany Jennings, Consultant, CAP-2030
Elsa Da Costa Grangier, Director, Ashoka France
Emer Beamer, Co-Founder, Design-a-thon
Evelyn Ariape, CEO, Youth Climate Leaders
Kenneth Kwok, Founder and President, Better Together Foundation
Paramita Banerjee, Founder, DIKSHA
The selection followed a 2-step process:
Step 1: The jury members marked the applications and created a shortlist of 30
Step 2: The shortlist of 30 were asked to submit follow-up answers
Who are they?
Almaaz Mudaly, 15, South Africa
Anoushka Sinha, 19, India
Anum Khalid, 22, Pakistan
Binti Mohamed Zani, 20, Kenya
Claudia Costa, 20, England
Guadalupe Allard, 14, Chile
Hitarth Sheth, 18, India
Hugo Paul, 23, France
Karan Chakravarthy, 15, India
Katie Walsh, 15, United States
Louise Déjardin, 17, France
Natalie Chen, 15, Hong Kong
Ngoc Vuong Hong, 25, Vietnam
Raven Frias, 22, Phillippines
Rosa Voularinou, 16, Greece
Ruvarashe Moyo, 16, Zimbabwe
Soham Pal, 20, India
Yuki Wang, 14, Australia
What is The Youth Empowerment Circle?
#LearningPlanet, CAP-2030, and Catalyst 2030 launched the Youth Empowerment Circle (YEC) in May 2021, with the shared goal of supporting inspirational youth changemakers and initiatives. Soon after, the Francophone Youth Empowerment Circle was created, in partnership with Ashoka France, CAP-2030 and La Ville de Paris. These sessions are intended to demonstrate the value of collaborating across networks, ages, and geographies with the shared goal of supporting inspirational youth changemakers and initiatives.
The Circle connects organisations sharing the same focuses and ambitions and gives its members a space to share and promote their current work, initiatives, actions towards principal causes, and today’s most pressing issues affecting young people. Furthermore, it provides learning and feedback opportunities for its members and inspires them by sharing and accessing new ideas and best practices, potentially leading to new ways of working and new projects to support youth.
Thus far, we have heard from over 25 youth speakers over the span of four interactive sessions from Australia, Cameroon, Chile, France, Hong Kong, India, Italy, Peru, Philippines, South Africa, and the United Arab Emirates, presenting their hopes, dreams and strategies for youth empowerment. We are committed to ensuring Council diversity, and encourage nominations from around the world. We are also grateful for the participation of 6 institutional speakers to foster a spirit of intergenerational collaboration, and over 300 attendees who have actively participated in the previous sessions.
