Let's start at the very beginning....
Firstly, hello. This is my first blog and my first ever blog post, so bear with me as I try to document this amazing journey I find myself on. I belong to a dynamic group of 20 young people from the UK, Zambia, Kenya, Ghana, Tanzania, Uganda and Malawi.
So who are we? We are a part of the #BigIdea, a youth-led accountability project from Restless Development (their website is here). We are tasked with an amazing job, which I will explain in a moment. This is us! (look below)
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| All of the #BigIdea Accountability Advocates (I'm the short haired girl, 3rd down on the right) |
"If the world today is a reality of yesterday's Imagination,there is nothing more I can do now but to imagine an inclusive, accountable and transparent Government in my country "
Kakaire Wilber
And who am I? I’m a 19 year old vegetarian
recycling guru from a tiny village in the back-end of Wiltshire with a passion
for politics and cacti. I am a member of Restless Developments’ crack
team of Accountability Advocates with the purpose of
holding our respective governments to account for achieving the Sustainable
Development Goals which matter most to young people in their country.
‘What are
the Sustainable Development Goals?’, You all cry. ‘What on earth did you just
say??’
Patience, my dear friend. To begin the
journey, you have to cast your minds back to 2000, when UN leaders and
countries set 8 MILLENNIUM DEVELOPMENT GOALS with targets such as ‘halve the
number of people in extreme poverty’ ‘eliminate child mortality’ ‘achieve
environmental sustainability’. These goals were, sorry to say, poorly planned
and mostly only focused on less developed nations around the world, meaning
that western countries such as the UK and the US could consign the MDGs to
their aid departments, and not integrate them into the everyday lives of their
population. This is why, 15 years later, little has changed. 1.2 billion people are still in extreme poverty, and global partnerships firmly remain in an 'economic' space.
This is
where the Sustainable Development Goals come in.
The
sustainable development goals, or SDGs, are a set of 17 goals set by the UN
which all countries in the UN must sign up to, with the aim of completing the
goals by 2030. This time, a more holistic approach has been made with regards
to forming the goals, and calls upon ALL governments around the world to make
change in their nation, not just ones in which some inhabitants have to live on
less than USD$1 a day.
‘Right,
okay. So what do you have to do with all of this?’
Based on the research done by Team UK with
the help of the Post-15 agenda priorities, we have decided to focus on 2 key
areas which young people in the UK have said are most important to them:
Violence against women (VAW) including FGM, and sexual reproductive health
rights (SRHR). Based on these priorities, it is now the job of Keya, Nazzy and
I to track the commitments made by the government surrounding those two
priorities, and hold the UK government accountable for its actions.. It sounds
scary and complicated, so here is a diagram to help make it easier to
understand:
So, the next stage in the great plan is
finding other passionate people to help us fulfil our aims. This is so that our
crack Accountability Advocates team can work effectively, as well as building
the capacity of the member organisations we will be working with to do youth
accountability work. It’s going to be a long journey, and I’m learning as I go
(playing things by ear is a big part of this position), but that doesn’t mean
that I am not extremely excited to start this year of work. Lastly, big shoutout to all of the NGOs that have made this project possible: African Monitor, YES Ghana, Plan, Restless Development and our partner the European Commission.
Finally, a quick word from Rachel Litster, our fantastic Project Manager
“The Accountability Advocates project is part of Restless Development's Big Idea programme, which aims to empower young people with the knowledge, skills and networks needed to analyse official data and generate their own to track progress towards national and international development commitments. With this support we believe that young people will become leaders in seeking accountability. Implemented by Restless Development, in partnership African Monitor, Plan UK and YES Ghana - and cofunded by the Erasmus+ programme of the European Union - the Accountability Advocates project aims to equip young leaders from youth-led organisations across Africa and Europe with the skills needed to monitor the implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals. Over the course of the project, in partnership with a broad range of stakeholders, the Accountability Advocates will be developing a national accountability framework to support them in collecting and generating data to seek social accountability on an issue that they and their peers identify as a key priority in their local context. To find out more about the project, please email the Big Idea Project Manager, Rachel Litster (rach@restlessdevelopment.org).”
I hope that this has been an informative blog post, and if anybody has any questions/critiques/ comments, don't hesitate! Thanks for reading, Raf :)
