KUWAIT CITY, April 4, (KUNA): Improving the community lives in is not longer a concern for adults alone, and today, many youth have looked beyond the barrier of age, gender and nationality and sought effective ways to improve the places where they grow up and live. However, these ideas and projects that youth come up with have little impact if they are not guided and supported by the right channels, and many NGOs and civil societies have taken it upon themselves to help these active youth men and women so that they may lead their peers in pushing for environmental, educational, health and social issues of importance to their communities.

The British Council’s Global Changemakers program is just one of many programs around the world that are doing just this — the program has a powerful, life-changing impact on young leaders and helps them in reaching, engaging and directly influencing their mainstream peers, over a five-year period, through a well designed awareness raising program. The project is about turning the vision for a better future into a reality.

Some of the participants in the Global Changemakers program are actually selected to take part in the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos, Switzerland, and other regional WEF meetings — an opportunity to present their ideas to decision-makers.
Yara Al-Wazir from the British School of Kuwait (BSK) and Fahad Al-Khuzam from Gulf University of Science and Technology (GUST) were among 60 young activists aged 16-19 who were selected to participate in the Global Changemakers program this year. They met at the Guildford Forum near London January 18-24 to discuss the challenges that their communities face regarding issues such as climate change, education, intercultural conflict and the devastating impact of poverty.

Experience
“The experience was eye-opening and very insightful ... it is inspiring to be among 60 people that share the same cause: making the world a better place, “ Yara told KUNA.
Fahad, on his part, said that it was “interesting” to see how youth from different communities thought, “but most importantly we came to be grateful for the good health conditions in Kuwait, as we worked with youth from third world countries whose priorities were combating AIDS, caring for orphans, and fighting to get adequate education.”
Both Yara and Fahad chose to focus on environmental issues, coming from a community that depends on oil as an energy source.

Participants in the program have been asked to submit a Community Action Program (CAP) proposal to the Global Changemakers headquarters in Switzerland, and this will either be approved or amended to make it more efficient before funding is authorized.
Yara dubbed her CAP proposal “The Green Initiative,” and she seeks funding of 500 pounds to start an environmental awareness programs in schools targeting 6-10 year olds. By 2012, she hopes to increase the target age groups and to reach out to at least 20 schools.
“We will try to reduce carbon footprinting in schools and to convince students that this is something they should really care about ... and encourage them to seek alternative energy sources,” she explained.
Kuwait is one of the top countries in the world with high solar energy resources, where it receives 202 kilowatt of solar radiation per hour over every square kilometer. Experts says that using only one percent, or 180 square meters, of the Gulf state’s territory for harvesting solar energy is sufficient to secure the country’s total needs of electric power.