Strawberry Generation? Call Us Changemakers

Changemakers: Jacqueline Joseph, Xi Ying Soo, Dyas Winata, Zin Nwe

Strawberry Generation is a term used frequently in Asia a decade ago to recapture the youths who were spoiled, in apathy and could not withstand the social pressure. In Canada, Indonesia, Malaysia, Myanmar and Papua New Guinea, we face different youth work problems, yet there is a mutual, persistent issue that all of us face as youth – there is a huge gap and a lack of opportunities where youth can take part on. <em>Strawberry Generation? Call us Changemakers</em> envisions to address that persistent issue as well as to bridge the gaps so that we can live in an empowered community. Strawberry Generation? Call us Changemakers aims to hold several activities. From talks, photo exhibits, postcard projects to youth seminars.

Talks will comprise of identifying issues local youths from different areas (we try to include as many local representatives as possible), discuss to come up with the most doable solutions that youths can solve or lessen the issues’ effects and finally a report will be made to other areas. Why is a report important? In Canada and Indonesia, people who get informed about youth work opportunities or who attend conferences/summits/forums are always in the same circle. As people in this circle builds a network, letting others know about hubs for volunteer opportunities wil greatly increase youth participation and allows those who have some undiscovered talents/passions to shine and inspire.

We have talked to the people In the circle that they mostly find the opportunities from the internet. In our countries (exclude Canada), the internet access remains low thus we believe using national postage service is a great medium. Therefore we will feature different action projects youth can take part in through our postcards. Postcards will be given after we do our talks or they will be put in youth centres. Having postcards free of charge enables youth who cannot afford to access internet to let their peers know about wonderful action projects that youths in other side of the world are doing. Who knows, the people who are involved in this postcard project may start doing community projects after being inspired from our postcards.

We also think that many youths in our communities have the willingness to contribute but they just don’t have the resource to do so. Thus we will also plan a project visit. In our talks, several project visits (close to where they live) will be featured. In the end, there will be a sign up sheet that will later be used to keep in touch with interested prospective volunteers. Trainings or information sessions following to the visits will be done to get youth familiar with the activities they will be doing during the visits.