Green Light Youth Movement Campaign

Students for Global Democracy Uganda has carried out a Youth Green Light Movement induction and mobilisation campaign in secondary schools and communities in the Central and Rubaga divisions of Kampala.

The campaign whose objective, is to mobilise and organise young people to generate action oriented thoughts on issues that affect them is highly beneficial because it moves in to create platform for accountability

This was initiated through a process of induction to the school administration, school club representatives and an induction to the entire school through an organized platform of an assembly to introduce the green light larger concept.

During the green light induction and mobilisation campaign in the so far reached out secondary schools, the youth manifesto as the background for the green light movement was explained; streamlining the critical issues and the achievements made. And of now, we have so far registered about 500 students; however the registration is still running in these schools.

The induction and mobilization activity has so far targeted schools in central district of Kampala like Mengo Senior Secondary School, Old Kampala Senior Secondary School, Kampala Senior Secondary School and Alliance Standard High School. Our target is to reach out to many secondary schools in and around Kampala, both urban and peri-urban school setting in the four divisions of Kampala, and if funds allow, we shall even think of reaching out schools beyond Kampala district.

BACKGROUND

Students for Global democracy is actively involved in the mobilisation campaign in the green light movement targeting semi-urban, peri-urban secondary schools and community as its target population, because all these youths in target schools and communities are faced with diverse social challenges where they come from therefore they are relatively very important in the green light movement campaign. All this,  is  because of  their increasing numbers being the highest in the population; their critical needs not being adequately met; their increased status of awareness on socio-economic, political and cultural drivers of the modern global lifestyle; their growing level of ambition in all aspects of life, and yet their increasing vulnerability to the ever dynamic and challenging contemporary life.

This group can no longer be ignored as key stakeholders in determining the path of their lives and the country they live in, and the success of efforts to promote sustainable development demands a focused approach on how qualitatively the young people are mobilised, informed and accommodated as stake holders.

OVERALL OBJECTIVE

The campaign is to co-create a mobilised and organised youth community that generates action oriented thoughts through the use of various social media platform and an inter-face platform for accountability.

ACTIVITY

• Induction campaign to the school administration and club representatives.
• Presentation of the Youth Manifesto.
• Presentation of the Green Light Movement Concept.
• Signing of Green Light Movement zee cards.

ACTIVITY DESCRIPTION

·          The induction campaign to the school administration and club representatives was to build a sense of common understanding with the already existing clubs, this strongly views the existing clubs like writers clubs, computer clubs as platforms that can sustainable play a role in the green light objectives.

·         The school outreach activity induction campaign involved the presentation of the youth manifesto which is the ideal background of the green light movement, the Youth Manifesto, which is a document that symbolizes a ‘youth collective voice’ reflecting their demand for certain critical youth needs,  reflects the youth’s idea of possessing a working document along which they can mobilize and organize themselves needed to be introduced as an ideal background and populization plan because its was  blue print only known to those elite sections of the youth who conceived, made and drafted the document.

·          Presentation of the green light movement concept idea involved introducing the objective of mobilising and organising youth on green light face to face, green light face book, green light sms platform.

·         The signing of the green light contact card is the activity that sums up the induction green light campaign with contact emails, phone numbers, face book accounts. The process was carried out through existing school programs and platform like the already existing clubs and organised school assemblies.

CHALLENGES

o   The school administration fear of the political aspect of the movement made it hard however through continued efforts of induction meetings, the relevancy of the campaign was well received

o   At the moment our target is highly school going youth who are faced with different challenges and not focusing on the out-of school youth who may have a relatively approach on the green light movement of co-creating mobilised and organised community

o   The lack of streamlined communication was a challenge and this greatly affected the working methodologies highly.

o   The lack of knowledge of young people to use social media platform like face book accounts makes it hard for the young people to participate greatly through these media platforms.

RECOMMENDATIONS

·         The need to streamline communication and information at this stage that will create greater actioned role and responsibility of what role needed to be played for the achievements of the core objectives of the movement.

·         To achieve the greater participation of young people, there is need for immediate follow up through a focused show display and training of the benefits of social media tools and the larger concept of the green light movement campaign in their school and communities.

·         There is need to develop a green light movement manual streamlining aspects of the campaign and this will play a core role in information sharing and for sustainability for the movement in school communities.

·         There is need to create a green light community volunteerism and community service activity that will move to create the walking speech of active participation and in the essence so many young people will in the long run develop possible altitudinal change to develop a spirit of volunteerism and community service if we are to achieve positive sustainable development.

·         A platform that inspires young people with accessibility of information on job placement and other relatives information will move the movement to greater achievement, with SGD Uganda this is relatively working because we have designed an interactive website that we hope will contribute to the achievement of the youth manifesto and the green light movement campaign achievements