SINGAPORE-based Asean Youth Community (AYC) and local consultancy firm Ygoal Inc. recently launched the local version of the AYC to help prepare young Filipinos for the Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR).
According to Ygoal, the 4IR brings technological advances that are changing the nature of work.
“This rapidly changing landscape requires young people to develop 21st-century skills in order to adapt and thrive not only in the Philippines, but as part of the Asean Economic Community (AEC), which aspires to be the fourth largest economic bloc by 2030. Are the Filipino youth ready?,” the consultancy firm’s statement said.
Citing data from the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA), Ygoal noted that the country’s median age is 23 years old and Filipinos aged 15 to 34 make up over 45.1 percent of the country’s labor force.
To help Filipino youth take advantage of opportunities in the 4IR, the AYC, a regional youth-empowerment program based in Singapore, launched on September 17 its presence in the Philippines through Ygoal.
For its initial campaign, the AYC Philippines will hold a three-day pilot boot camp in November. This will serve as an avenue to develop design thinking, creative collaboration, leadership and community development.
The program will also provide the participants opportunity to practice their learning through community immersion with social entrepreneurs or to apply for internship in AYC’s partner companies in the Philippines and other Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) countries.
Though it is not part of the Asean Ministerial Sectoral bodies, the AYC promotes Asean community building as a youth-led civic initiative.
“Formal structures have constraints that prevent agility and tolerance in the fail-learn cycle. We are discovering how trust networks are more effective in moving forward to create synergies that achieve our vision for youth empowerment,” AYC Executive Director Lei Motilla said.
The AYC claims it promotes the idea that young people can develop 21st-century skills and be competitive in the region if they are bridging leaders first in their local communities.
AYC emphasizes the need to facilitate understanding and relevance of the SDGs articulated by local youth themselves and not by privileged outsiders.
“We have to empower young people to gain skills ready for emerging industries in Asean, without leaving behind youth in local communities with limited access to opportunities,” AYC Program Chairman Delane Lim was quoted in the statement as saying.
Lim, a youth development advocate from Singapore, is one of those who saw emerging challenges in youth development and decided to take action. He mobilized his network in the public and private sector across the region to gather resources and form a youth-empowerment initiative for the 2018 Singapore Asean Chairmanship. “If we want young people with great ideas and solutions to scale, we need to build a strong base of a self-organized [AYC], to enable horizontal learning and cross-cultural collaboration,” Muhammad Faishal Ibrahim, Singapore’s Senior Parliamentary Secretary for Family and Social Development and Education, said.
Thus, the strategy of AYC is to establish its presence across Asean countries by collaborating with the public and private sector “with a common goal of empowering the Asean youth as partners for sustainable growth.”
“The ecosystem approach with an entrepreneurial model is designed to provide incentives that sustain youth organizing as a common base to support SDG advocacy operations in the region, while encouraging grit to constantly learn, unlearn and relearn to collaborate creatively at doing good beyond good intentions for the Asean community.”
“AYC in the Philippines aims to empower youth to be #AseanReady by enabling opportunities to increase employability and develop entrepreneurship among Asean youth by integrating 21st-century skills with leadership practice in community development,” AYC Ygoal President Ireneo G. Demecais Jr. said.
To be guided and aligned with existing initiatives for 21st-century skills in the 4IR, youth empowerment and Asean community building, the AYC actively seeks the mentorship of a network of enablers to coordinate its efforts across regional organizations, such as the Asean Foundation, UN Asia-Pacific youth interagency network and the Ramon Magsaysay Awards Foundation (RMAF) Inc.
According to Motilla, the AYC is also establishing a mentoring partnership with RMAF to ensure the generation of emerging leaders in Asean is guided by “change-makers” across the region who have grounded years of experience in social development.