Collaborative Regional Workshop on Leading with Integrity – Realising the Potential of Student Youth Leadership

These were the words of a young participant at the Asia Regional Consultation on Student Youth Movements held from 14^th – 17^th September 2010 in New Delhi by the Commonwealth Youth Programme Asia Centre in collaboration with the Ministry of Youth Affairs and Sports, Government of India. The workshop was titled Leading with Integrity – Realising the Potential of Student Youth Leadership.

The Regional Consultation brought together 14 student youth leaders from leading Asian universities and six youth functionaries from the Ministries of Youth across the Commonwealth Asian region – Bangladesh, Brunei, India, Malaysia, Singapore and Sri Lanka. The objective of the workshop was to enable participants to share their experiences, build personal leadership skills and explore the possibility of enhancing regional networking among student youth organizations in the Asia Commonwealth nations.

The workshop enabled student leaders to understand their role as representative leaders in strengthening their organisations through strengthening themselves. Students also understood the diversity of the circumstances affecting different countries within the region, and recognised the need for working together regionally to support less well-resourced student leaders and their organizations. As one student youth participant said, the workshop enabled him to “seriously consider overseas community projects” in less advantaged countries. The Consultation also became a forum where students discussed their own struggles as student leaders and exchanged ways and means of standing up to these challenges.

One outcome of the workshop will be a Delhi Statement of Asian Student Youth Leaders (forthcoming), outlining the ways forward in student activities and in terms of institutional and national policy and practice in relation to student youth movements. Another will be a compendium of case studies of best practices and personal and organisational learning emerging from the experiences of student youth leaders.

The workshop follows a mandate given by young people themselves at the Commonwealth Secretariat-led Youth Forum comprising exclusively of student youth, which preceded the Commonwealth Conference of Education Ministers (CCEM) held in Kuala Lumpur in 2009. Here, young students upheld the Commonwealth Secretariat as the apex body that should “develop … standards for the governing of student bodies and organizations”.

The Consultation was inaugurated by Mr. A.K. Upadhyay, Secretary, Department of Youth Affairs, Ministry of Youth Affairs & Sports, Government of India in the presence of Mr. Raj K Mishra, Regional Director, CYP Asia Centre and was facilitated by Prof Thomas Abraham, a proponent of democratic social action by student youth organisations.