Rationale

Community youth organizing is a fundamental action in a democracy. It is a tool to invite the youth to come together, and discuss their issues and concerns, and orchestrate action. This interplay of ideas, opinions, and action are essential elements of good governance. It is also a space where the youth could collectively opine to the government actions and at the same time engage in policy making. However, we have not concretely capacitated our democratic space. We have developed a Barangay Youth Development Organizing Program. It is under the Leadership and Values Development towards Good Governance thrust which is one of the key areas of action of the Oro Youth Council. Its main purpose is to organize the youth of the selected pilot barangays with the hope of doing the same in all 80 Barangays of our city. And in the long run, the organized youth shall articulate and lobby their youth agenda to their barangay council. The starting point of the program is a half-day barangay youth convergence which shall be organized by each of the pilot barangays. The government interns who happen to reside in these pilot barangays and some volunteers will be deployed in the field to organize a half-day summit. At the end of the event, the delegates to the convergence shall be able to elect their own officers and representatives to the following sectors: in-school, out of school, indigenous people and moro youth, youth movements, and the youth with special needs. This shall then be the start-of-point of youth engagements in the barangay level starting off with youth profiling, strategic planning, and project implementation and performance evaluation. It is the ultimate hope of the Oro Youth Development Council to capacitate these organizations to become forces of good governance the years to come.