The 10th class of the APDA Youth Forum: New Role of Youth in Poverty, Environment, and Aging Issues.

The 10th class of the APDA Youth Forum,

To Propose a New Role of Youth in Poverty, Environment, and Aging Issues.

17 October 2021 (Sunday)

The Lecture and Q&A Session

On September 25, the 10th class of "APDA's Global Young Leaders Course," planned and established by Hanna Yoon, director of K Policy & Media Lab (KGM Lab), was held with the aim of proposing policies for the APDA Youth Forum. Farhana Haque Rahman, senior vice president of IPS(Inter Press Service), participated as an instructor and made policy proposals on the theme of youth's role in solving poverty, environment, and aging problems.

This class was conducted by senior vice president of IPS Rahman. Students prepared a youth forum based on what they have learned through the previous nine classes, and Rahman helped them with the feedback. Rahman, vice president, gave a lecture on the role of adolescents contributing to the solution of accelerating environmental problems and poverty and aging problems. In particular, she gave lectures on how students can derive meaningful results from news articles and forums.

The Presentation of Each Group’s Policy Proposals

While preparing for the forum, students devised policies to solve the problems of environment, poverty, and aging, and thought about what role teenagers could play in this area. First, the students identified the cause of the problem on each topic for each team and did in-depth discussions. Then Students had time to derive social problems of team-specific topics based on the UN SDGs, come up with various ideas on how to solve them, and find solutions to overcome the global environmental, poverty, and aging problems. Students were able to improve their practical situation analysis and problem-solving skills through the process of analyzing and exchanging feedback on the realistic benefits and risks of the policy with senior vice president Rahman and Dr. Yoon.

Policy Proposal and Feedback

Each team proposed holding a contest and an environmental forum to solve the carbon emission problem, and suggested basketball trash cans based on the nudge policy and collaboration with artists as alternatives to carbon reduction. Meanwhile, in order to distribute uneven food resources, a policy to educate smart agricultural technology to the minority was proposed, and a policy to distribute health status check programs using AI to the elderly was devised as well. Through these efforts, it is expected that youth will be able to play a major role in providing creative ideas or helping the elderly who have difficulty using machines. Rahman and Dr. Yoon pointed out risks or provided more effective advice to the policies proposed by the students.

The course is held every Saturday in real-time online classes, all in English. Students who participated in the class take lectures consisting of 10 experts in each field, including women, children, health, economy, and smart agriculture, and discuss international issues. All curriculums and youth forums are overseen by Hanna Yoon, director of KGM Lab.

* This article is written based on the content of the class after KGM Lab. interns attended 『APDA’s Global Young Leaders Course』

** Copyright of this article is in the KGM Lab. and APDA and it is prohibited from unauthorized copying without permission

Keywords: APDA, Global Youth Forum, SDGs, Environment, Aging, Poverty, Farhana Haque Rahman, IPS

Writing and editing by

Intern, Ha-yeon Choi (cab06035@naver.com)

Intern, Young-jun Park (parkyj0330@gmail.com)

Intern, Da-seul Shin (daaaseul.shin@gmail.com)

Intern, Yea-un Lee (yeaun302@gmail.com)

Planning/General Manager

Han-na Yoon. (Ph.D. in Media and Governance)

Director of KGM Lab.

APDA Strategy and Communications Consultant/General Responsibility for Training

Senior Professor at Soong-sil University