Giving Pen Empowerment to Youth
Performance management generally focuses on organizations and improvement and needs serious experience and focus. But here is something that places youth in the chair. The question is, with so called YGEN attitudes today, how can anyone seriously suggest development can be done by young people?
Well Clare Hanbury does and this is what she says:
With our help, young people, can help solve society’s health & social justice issues,
We are now living in an amazing transitional time with a generation with new ideas and an extraordinary ability to multi task. These can doers are trail blazers with a disregard for expertise and a heightened sense of personal power. They believe theirs is the only way and they are ready to do the work
To get results we must join youth where they abd asked how close they are to the problems they are trying to solve.
In this talk Clare makes compelling points with real life examples that give young people the power of the pen and encourages them with respect and connected listening to keep them close and involved in getting solutions. Here is the link to her talk.Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
Many of Clare’s publications on HIV, AIDS, and Refugees and her radio broadcasts with children, anti-personnel landmine safety are available for free. Others are available from the website www.child-to-child.org. She also speaks in many forums and publishes a regular blog.
When I contacted her about her work she told me with some pride 
about a defining book she wrote called Children for Health (first published in 2005 by Macmillan).
The book includes examples and practical suggestions on how to implement an integrated approach to school health promotion and the provision of quality health education for children around the world.
She has also contributed to other publications such as First Choices she tells me its new incarnation entitled “Our Future” is a splendid series published and distributed for free by the International AIDS alliance. She said she is more than happy to provide more detail on any this for anyone interested.
I also asked her about her Copenhagen talk which she said was the outcome of a long-standing relationship with colleagues at DANIDA (Danish Government AID) born out of practical field work done in Kenya She went on to say,
DANIDA funded the involvement of children and young people in a nutrition project that turned around a pattern of malnutrition in the under 5’s in an areas of Kenya called the Machakos district.
This in a fertile area of Kenya where families grow French beans for supermarkets! This makes the high malnutrition figures in this area all the more tragic. Anyway the work of the children really took hold. They were advocates and teachers in their own families and really made a difference.
I feel very privileged to have connected with Clare, who knows how to work with youth so they can make a difference for us all. I recommend the Clare Hanbury site as one you should add to your RSS feed. Then you can stay focused on her message as she continues to reinforce it in her work. Maybe there is also something you can do to help.
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Her websites include:
www.YoungSolutionsInternationaLcom
