Creating Inclusive Recovery

What was your least useful Christmas present in 2019? It wasn’t the naff socks or the too-hard cook book… it was the 2020 planner. None of us could have imagined how badly our lives and work would be blown off-course and how urgently we would need to reimagine our world.

Whilst ordinary citizens could not have been expected to anticipate this crisis, there are no excuses at governmental or intergovernmental level. September 2019 saw the release of first annual report authored by the Global Preparedness Monitoring Board, an independent panel of experts convened by the World Bank and the World Health Organization. It’s opening sentence? “There is a very real threat of a rapidly moving, highly lethal pandemic of a respiratory pathogen killing 50 to 80 million people.” Barack Obama was frequently asked what kept him awake at night – journalists were often surprised to hear “a pandemic” rather than a dirty bomb or terrorist attack.

The mission of One Young World is to identify, promote and connect young leaders in order to create the next generation of more responsible and effective leadership. Kate founded One Young World in 2009 with David Jones in the belief that the world’s systemic issues were a result of a leadership vacuum. This thesis has proven tragically true in recent years, most particularly with the Covid-19 Pandemic.

At every level, the world deserves better, less short-termist leadership. In order to achieve this, we need to ensure that we are investing in young leaders – if they are not included in our thinking now as part of the recovery, they will be left behind in the response.

Economies today are still scarred by the legacy of youth unemployment pertaining to the GFC and will be felt by society for decades. Impacts include subsequent lower pay, higher unemployment and reduced life chances as well as significant mental health issues. We must ensure we are doing everything we can to make significant investments in young leaders, their work and opportunities for them if we are to avoid repeating such a recent mistake.

We must all ask “What can my organisation do? What can I personally do?” to play a part in securing prospects of young people, preventing them from being a generation left behind.

Like everyone, One Young World has had to adapt to this brave new world and find new ways of partnering and working: we’ve teamed up with the Zurich Foundation, the IKEA Foundation, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and United Way to ensure that young people are able to receive funding for the work they’re doing on the Covid-19 response.

The Covid-19 Young Leaders Fund is established to fund initiatives from young leaders around the world which are directly battling the Coronavirus pandemic with tangible front-line results.

From producing face masks and providing hand sanitizer in remote areas, to provide tech to community health workers, to ensuring refugee communities can access government health advice – the Covid-19 Young Leaders Fund welcomes a variety of solutions from all walks of life.

One Young World believes that young leaders are part of the most connected, informed, and resourceful generation in human history. Their capacity for innovation, understanding of digital tools and high levels of social responsibility make them a powerful actor in addressing any humanitarian challenge, especially this pandemic. Young leaders get results – activities led by the One Young World Community alone have directly impacted 26 million people since 2010

Our earliest work was inspired by the heroes of the anti-Apartheid movement: Archbishop Desmond Tutu and Nelson Mandela. Racial justice has been one of our core tenets throughout the first decade of our existence. We are now called upon to go much further and play a part in addressing systemic racism in a far more aggressive and urgent manner.

One of the tragedies of the pandemic is that it has deepened every divide in our society: far from being “the great leveller” it has widened every inequality gap. As well as funding projects reducing disparities in outcome for BIPOC Covid-19 patients, we are working with our community to create a series of tangible calls to action to enable people to take proactive, anti-racist steps. Our corporate partnership network is the largest of any UK-based charity and we will be working with them to help them adopt anti-racist practices.

As we write in How To Make A Difference, the definitive handbook to activism, truly sustainable movements are inclusive at their core. If we are to rebuild our world sustainably in the wake of this pandemic, we must include leadership from a broader range of communities – at every stage, as yourself “who is not in the room?” Next time, make sure they’re at the table.

The era of national challenges is over. Global challenges will demand global responses and it is up to all of us to drastically change the way we respond in future.

Kate Robertson, Co-Founder & CEO, One Young World
Ella Robertson, Managing Director, One Young World,
Co-authors of How To Make A Difference, available in bookshops and online.
www.oneyoungworld.com
Twitter: @KateatOYW
Twitter: @Ellarobertson

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Creating Inclusive Recovery

What was your least useful Christmas present in 2019? It wasn’t the naff socks or the too-hard cook book… it was the 2020 planner. None of us could have imagined how badly our lives and work would be blown off-course and how urgently we would need to reimagine our world.

Whilst ordinary citizens could not have been expected to anticipate this crisis, there are no excuses at governmental or intergovernmental level. September 2019 saw the release of first annual report authored by the Global Preparedness Monitoring Board, an independent panel of experts convened by the World Bank and the World Health Organization. It’s opening sentence? “There is a very real threat of a rapidly moving, highly lethal pandemic of a respiratory pathogen killing 50 to 80 million people.” Barack Obama was frequently asked what kept him awake at night – journalists were often surprised to hear “a pandemic” rather than a dirty bomb or terrorist attack.

The mission of One Young World is to identify, promote and connect young leaders in order to create the next generation of more responsible and effective leadership. Kate founded One Young World in 2009 with David Jones in the belief that the world’s systemic issues were a result of a leadership vacuum. This thesis has proven tragically true in recent years, most particularly with the Covid-19 Pandemic.

At every level, the world deserves better, less short-termist leadership. In order to achieve this, we need to ensure that we are investing in young leaders – if they are not included in our thinking now as part of the recovery, they will be left behind in the response.

Economies today are still scarred by the legacy of youth unemployment pertaining to the GFC and will be felt by society for decades. Impacts include subsequent lower pay, higher unemployment and reduced life chances as well as significant mental health issues. We must ensure we are doing everything we can to make significant investments in young leaders, their work and opportunities for them if we are to avoid repeating such a recent mistake.

We must all ask “What can my organisation do? What can I personally do?” to play a part in securing prospects of young people, preventing them from being a generation left behind.

Like everyone, One Young World has had to adapt to this brave new world and find new ways of partnering and working: we’ve teamed up with the Zurich Foundation, the IKEA Foundation, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and United Way to ensure that young people are able to receive funding for the work they’re doing on the Covid-19 response.

The Covid-19 Young Leaders Fund is established to fund initiatives from young leaders around the world which are directly battling the Coronavirus pandemic with tangible front-line results.

From producing face masks and providing hand sanitizer in remote areas, to provide tech to community health workers, to ensuring refugee communities can access government health advice – the Covid-19 Young Leaders Fund welcomes a variety of solutions from all walks of life.

One Young World believes that young leaders are part of the most connected, informed, and resourceful generation in human history. Their capacity for innovation, understanding of digital tools and high levels of social responsibility make them a powerful actor in addressing any humanitarian challenge, especially this pandemic. Young leaders get results – activities led by the One Young World Community alone have directly impacted 26 million people since 2010

Our earliest work was inspired by the heroes of the anti-Apartheid movement: Archbishop Desmond Tutu and Nelson Mandela. Racial justice has been one of our core tenets throughout the first decade of our existence. We are now called upon to go much further and play a part in addressing systemic racism in a far more aggressive and urgent manner.

One of the tragedies of the pandemic is that it has deepened every divide in our society: far from being “the great leveller” it has widened every inequality gap. As well as funding projects reducing disparities in outcome for BIPOC Covid-19 patients, we are working with our community to create a series of tangible calls to action to enable people to take proactive, anti-racist steps. Our corporate partnership network is the largest of any UK-based charity and we will be working with them to help them adopt anti-racist practices.

As we write in How To Make A Difference, the definitive handbook to activism, truly sustainable movements are inclusive at their core. If we are to rebuild our world sustainably in the wake of this pandemic, we must include leadership from a broader range of communities – at every stage, as yourself “who is not in the room?” Next time, make sure they’re at the table.

The era of national challenges is over. Global challenges will demand global responses and it is up to all of us to drastically change the way we respond in future.

Kate Robertson, Co-Founder & CEO, One Young World
Ella Robertson, Managing Director, One Young World,
Co-authors of How To Make A Difference, available in bookshops and online.
www.oneyoungworld.com
Twitter: @KateatOYW
Twitter: @Ellarobertson

Previous article