The Sendai Stakeholders Children and Youth Group which is formal children and youth constituency to the UNDRR affiliated and part of the Stakeholder Engagement Mechanism (SEM) organized a project “Asia Pacific Researchers, Practitioners & Policy-makers in Dialogue with Children & Youth '' funded by Stockholm Environment Institute (SEI) from December 2020 to June 2021. 

This project was led by the Major Group for the Children and Youth (MGCY) hosted by the Children and Youth International (CYI),  in partnership with Converge Working Group and the Asia Pacific Coalition for School Safety (APCSS). It seeked to leverage several child and youth focused activities being planned in two phases which were conducted remotely due to COVID-19 situation. These events and activities intended to inform a pre-conference youth summit planned for the lead up to the Asia Pacific  Ministerial Conference for Disaster Risk Reduction (APMCDRR), the largest gathering of  high-level decision-makers in the region for disaster risk reduction, in Brisbane, Australia,  which will take place in 2022 (having been postponed from 2020 due to the pandemic). 

ABOUT THE ACTIVITIES IN DETAILS: 

The Young Fellowship Programme 

The aim of the Young Fellowship Programme was to build the capacities of Asia Pacific youth  to conduct participatory action research and engage in youth-led advocacy for DRR and climate action. The Fifteen Young Fellows were assembled as part of the youth fellowship programme. The fellows worked on to contribute their key findings and recommendations on a research report and a set of policy briefs. At the end of the programme, the Young Fellows participated and presented in a two-day online workshop where they put their research and products to researchers,  practitioners and policy-makers from across the Asia Pacific. The Programme was organized as the first ever Asia Pacific Youth Forum on DRR and Climate Crisis 2021. It provided youth with valuable opportunities to develop their leadership capacity, as well as their abilities to communicate with their own constituency and effectively represent the interests of children and youth at the local, national and regional level. 

The Pandemic Time Capsule Project 

This activity was part of the implementation of the remote virtual organized initiative “The young generations: capturing  voices and action needed to build resilience for all”. The Remote activities were catered to the immediate goal of engaging children and youth with DRR policy-makers, researchers and practitioners to capture “perishable data” that can be used in the short- medium- and long-term to amplify the voices of children and youth, and develop dialogue with policy-makers. The subject-matter of these outputs covered both the current experience of global pandemics, as well as planning for all-hazards resilience, and climate action. This was envisioned to provide guidance to policy-makers and food-for-thought to operationalize the Words-into-Action guide. The remote activities included the following three: • Pandemic Diaries • Vox Pop Video Series • Disasters Deconstructed Podcast. 

NEXT STEPS 

The outcome of both remote activities and a young fellowship programme will be presented in  the next 9th APMCDRR (expected in 2022). The children and youth event would bring the voices of C&Y in front of dominant narratives. Their experience, knowledge and perspective have the  potential to reduce risks and to build a resilient world for themselves. In addition to that, the  impact of pandemic on children and youth would be voiced out in front of the major  stakeholders. The Asia-Pacific region has the highest percentage of youth population. So, the  capacity building and leveraging their knowledge in DRR would bring well-being to society and sustainability.