My name is Rahma and I’m 15 years old. I’ve been campaigning against FGM for 3 years in a youth lead group called Empowering which works with FORWARD. I got involved in the campaign against FGM because my mother worked with FORWARD and campaigned against FGM. As I came to learn more about FGM I became more passionate about the issue and became determined to raise awareness about the seriousness of the issue. The #YouthForChange event is about getting ideas for the youth sta...

I’m June, 16, from Nigeria, member of Plan UK’s Youth Advisory Panel, Youth Observer Trustee for Plan UK and blogger for Girls’ Globe. I believe we can end FGM and CEFM in a generation - this happened in my family. When my grandmother was strong enough to speak about FGM, it stopped completely. My mother grew up in Sierra Leone, a country where an estimated 88% of girls undergo Female Genital Mutilation (FGM), also known as female genital cutting or circumcision. But my...

Jeanne Chall’s Stages of Reading Development noted that between six months to six years old – called Stage 0 or Pre-reading/Pseudo reading stage – children “pretends” to read by retelling stories as they flip through the pages of books previously read to them. That’s happening to our Nicholas and Antoinette these days, although we are seeing a difference in the way they handle their books. Our boy still “eats” a book and enjoys munching its sides while our girl...

Seeing as this is my first blog post, I will start with a short introduction so that we can get to know ourselves a little better. My name is Christopher Onoka and I am a 19 year old Kenyan currently studying civil engineering in Germany. I love basketball and I am a proud foodie. So now let’s get down to business. Over the course of the next 6 months I am going to upload a blog post weekly, talking about a wide range of topics that all have to do with the youth. Discourse is...

Something pretty important is happening on the 12th of September this year. The UN Committee for the Rights of the Child will meet in Geneva to discuss updating the Convention for the Rights of the Child for a digital age. The world has certainly changed a lot since the 1980′s, the decade throughout which the convention was first drafted! To assist the Committee in their deliberations, and to ensure that young people’s experiences can directly inform their discussion, we are curr...

I have always been proud of being a teetotaller. It was a principle that I associated with my life from the very young days and to this day I have lived my life adhering to it with fierce commitment. Presently, I am interning at the Sri Lanka Anti-Narcotics Association, an organisation which works towards realising a drug- and alcohol-free nation. But sadly, alcohol seems to be a ‘sport for the trendy’ in our island nation today. ‘Statistics’ say that alcoholism is on...

They say “money makes the world go round” and that “education is the key to success”. With money invested in important sectors like education there can be development. That is why if I were a millionaire I would invest more in education and youth empowerment. I would invest in education especially in girl child education. I would make sure that the majority of girls access education because they say that “when you educate a girl child you educate a nation”. This is...

If I were a billionaire... What would you do if you had a billion pounds? What could you spend all that cold, hard cash on? I know what I'd spend it on. I'd buy a sports car and a mansion (or two). But seriously what could we do with a billion pounds to help? What could we do to be a good citizen of this world of ours? I don't need to go into detail, because the answer is simple really. If I had a billion pounds I would help the poor. I would help those in Africa, by giving...

As the proverb goes: Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime. If I were a millionaire I would teach the world how to fish. I use the phrase how to fish metaphorically, we do not need so many fishermen. Poverty is one of the greatest problems of the world. A millionaire alone will not be able to eradicate poverty but the investment in the human race can be a big step in the right direction. Why does poverty exist?...