People for Change Foundation launches youth policy online library

The People for Change Foundation today launched the largest online library of youth policy in the world. The launch comes ahead of next week’s Commonwealth Youth Forum and the human rights think tank’s repository includes documents from the United Nations, regional organizations, national governments, NGOs and academic institutions.

The online library, www.youthmetro.org, is based around the priority areas set out by the United Nations, yet develops a number of areas beyond these, including development, disability, urbanization, and humanitarian crises.

It stretches the international agenda to include areas that have not yet been adopted into formal youth policy, yet within which the role of young people is pivotal.

“We wanted to go beyond the cliché of young people being the leaders not of tomorrow but of today” Director of the People for Change Foundation Christine M. Cassar said.

“Instead, we wanted to look at the way we’ve come in youth policy and to provide resources to further develop youth policy. In doing so, we wanted to create a platform through which governments, organizations and individuals could have direct and easy access to what has already been developed,” she said.

Cassar said the fact that thi is only the first resource of this breadth and depth “is a sad reminder of how young people are often marginalised and their needs not put at the forefront of national and international policy; and most importantly how the voices of young people often remain unheard, even though youth are in many countries the largest social group.”

The repository presents relevant international, regional as well as national policies and reports, in addition to relevant research related to the respective area. It aims to bring together policies that address young people as a social group as well as those that address issues that are internationally recognised as primary concerns for youth

While providing for an overview of the policy development in the field of youth, it hopes to raise awareness of youth issues world-wide and to constitute an incentive for measuring policy development in the field of youth on international, regional and national level.