The Role of Youth in Community Development

Have you ever heard of the famous phrase that says “the youth are the future leaders”? If so, have you ever asked yourself when the future is? Or perhaps, at what exact point does one become the ‘leader’?

In most countries, young people make up the bigger piece of the population cake. This indicates the crucial role young people play today. Power lies in numbers and with the number advantage on their side, youngsters could do so much in their communities. Youth participation at hand has been under public scrutiny for some time now as the role young people can play in their communities is questioned every day. The explores the role of the youth in community development.

Frantz Fanon writes that “each generation must, out of relative obscurity, discover its mission, fulfil it or betray it”.

The young people in our communities should be proud of the above. Namibia is a rich country inhabited by poor people. Once we fix the people problem, everything else will fall into place. And the only people to fix this problem are young people.

Our point of departure should then be to discover our mission in our lifetime and to define our role in our respective communities. Our first and most important role is education. Education is our only option out of poverty and hunger. Let us take education very seriously. Young people should not be used as salad dressing, just for attending political rallies. The reality is that we are going to take over this country, and when we do, we are not going to look at how many political rallies you have attended, but what has been your role in the community. Young people, we are never found prepared and we are never present when important decisions are made. Let us read. Let us think and let us get involved and be found prepared. Young people should come together as a community to take collective action and generate solutions to common problems. Community well-being (economic, social, environmental and cultural) often evolves from this type of collective action being taken at a grass-roots level. It is our responsibility to get involved at grass-root level. Join a youth organisation in your community, take part in leadership programmes and provide leadership.

Young people are the number one stakeholder of development. We the youth have the power to change the living standards of our communities and more young people should stand up to do just that. A lot of times you will find young people complaining about the lack of services, finances and employment and no change ever occurs. I believe it is about time we realise that change will not come any time soon unless we ourselves bring about that change. We can start that spark to a bright light that will light our community for years to come.

Young people should stand up and do something for their community. We know best the problems our communities face on a daily basis. The best change we can bring as young people is to offer our time to help in our community through volunteering. The best way is to organise ourselves as a group and together we can tackle the problems our people face as there is a proverb that says “if you want to cross the river and you are afraid of the crocodile, cross in a group”.

Young people who have already taken the first step to the positive growth of their community now face a different challenge which is the lack of support from different stakeholders. But credit must be given where it is due, with organisations like the National Youth Council that continues to help young people who are willing to bring change in their communities. However, it is still up to us to take initiative and time to bring about change. We should not only be seen but also be heard in our communities.

The role we young people play in our communities is very vital as to we are sort of being mentored by our elders to take care of our community. We young people tend to ignore the fact that we are tomorrow’s future and that volunteering and being active in youth groups is a massive contribution towards development. We have different opinions on how things should be and what efforts to should be taken improve society. As a youth knowing this, engaging in challenging activities that will contribute to a change in society should be a learning experience. Airing my opinion on how society can change can make a difference because it paves the way I would like to see society in 20 years from now.

The role we have in society is different from our elders’ roles. We are in the 21st century and we are living in a techno world and we are trying to keep up with the rest of the world.

We are tasked with a very important role to make sure that we are also part of this society and that our different views are being catered for but we tend to ignore it as we still have the fear that our elders in power will not listen to us. Which resorts to us becoming reckless youth and forgetting that in Namibia, we have a pyramid population meaning the youth makes up almost 60% of the country. We have to create more platforms where we can air our opinions and only then will we be taken seriously in contributing to change.

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