Youth hold a unique place in the timeline of human history as they impact the present to shape the future they are to inherit. Hence empowering the youth is an empowerment of humanity as a whole. My dream is to facilitate the creation of a world where every young person is provided a suitable environment to become the best version of himself/ herself. My first volunteering experience encouraged me to commit my time to empowering fellow youth. In 2009 I was part of a student group who were invited to conduct self-developmental workshops for young girls who were former child soldiers in the LTTE army. They were undergoing rehabilitation at a centre in Mullaitivu. The stories of lives lost in the thirty year civil war, made me understand that the youth are often victims of societal circumstances, ranging from violent conflict to bad political leadership. On that day I decided to do everything in my capacity to empower the youth of the world and to support youth centric sustainable development. For several years afterwards I volunteered my time through various youth organizations. In recognition of my social work and leadership potential I was appointed as the United Nations Youth Delegate of Sri Lanka in 2016. This diplomatic appointment gave me the opportunity to work closely with the state system on youth development. The firsthand experience with the apex youth structures helped me to understand that the current approach to youth development is failing because of neglect of top-level youth empowerment and the absence of a nexus agent to coordinate individual efforts of youth movements. A series of experiences spanning over nine years, shaped the ideology of Youth Empowerment Incubation (YEI) which I introduced to Sri Lanka through the country’s first youth empowerment incubator, Hype Sri Lanka. Through this organization, my team and I hope to make top level youth empowerment a citizen level action and thereby limit the dependency on the state arms to carry it out. We also aim to unify the fragmented efforts of state and non-state youth agents.
Achieving sustainable development is only possible if micro level action is coordinated to create macro level change. Such transformative partnerships will result in innovation which will reduce inequalities. By globalizing the ideology of YEI, I seek to shift the existing paradigms of youth empowerment by demonstrating to the world that sustainable development cannot be achieved through unsustainable systems.
Sri Lanka 