Youth Work and Civic Engagement – International Policy Perspectives

We’re delighted that Kanika Sinha has confirmed to speak at this year’s Policy Convention. Find out more about Kanika’s 19 years of experience in the youth development sector in India.

At ComMutiny, Kanika supports the facilitation of the community of collective of over 85+ organisations spread across 18 states. She is a part of the core team that facilitates the vartaLeap Coalition and is entrusted to build partnerships and alliances towards amplifying the 5th Space approach to youth-centric development. Under her leadership, the #Saathnirbhar campaign has also been recognised by the World Economic Forum’’s COVID Response Alliance for Social Entrepreneur.

Kanika will speak about The Youth Duties and Rights Draft Declaration which upholds and draws from the values and the fundamental rights and duties enshrined in the Indian Constitution. This declaration aims to bring out the special rights and duties that relate to the large youth cohort of the country. These youth rights and duties, may be implicit in the Indian Constitution but they believe they need to be explicitly brought out so that they can be acted upon to contribute to a youth movement; just as in the case of the United Nations Convention for Rights of the Child, supported the child rights movement. This draft declaration has been co-created by the members of the vartaLeap Coalition. Find out more.

At this year’s Convention, Kanika will highlight It’s Not Working – 7 Mistakes that Took us Somewhere. This series of seven films explores the mistakes made in their collective experience of working with young people. Talking about these mistakes has led them to adopt seven powerful principles that define what it takes to create a youth-centric experience that nurtures the feelings of Love, Learning Freedom, Ownership and Social Hope in a young person. These design principles called FLOWING are at the bedrock of all interventions, curriculums and empowering spaces created for young people.  

We look forward to sharing and discussing our approach to human rights and the role of youth work at the upcoming policy convention. If this has whetted your appetite, sign up now!