There are many things written regarding the mission and intentions of YSAFE, many papers and presentations, so why am I writing this?
The trick is that still when it comes to selling YSAFE to potential members, partners, and youth organizations we could be cooperating with, some kind of resignation takes place in the way that it is much more easier for me to state all the possible flaws of the network instead of telling how wonderful and important it is.
Advice I received about this is to try to look at it from my very personal point of view, to acknowledge why I am volunteer in my MA and why the very idea of YSAFE is so appealing to me.
Well, first of all, I do believe in cause, I could sign with blood below every IPPF mission statement, strategic framework and policy paper, including those regarding youth empowerment and meaningful participation. And I am conscious that, although the level of the latter ones might seem somehow insufficient and progress on issues we are interested in – slow, this is the way we have available at the moment and that the only possible way to change it is to participate as much as we as young people, as volunteers, as activists, as responsible and informed members of society can.
I want to believe, if I would be Martin Luther King, I would say that I have a dream, that there will be day that YSAFE will be properly recognized brand all around the globe when it will come to the issues connected with sexuality of young people, or maybe I should put it other way around in the meaning that I expect that one day young people all around the European Network, from Norway to Israel and from Ireland to Kazakhstan, will enjoy the full range of sexual and reproductive rights and all the sexual health services needed and that they will use YSAFE as tool to get information from, exchange the most creative approaches and have fun.
As we are quite far from this at the moment, it is our duty to keep working towards it. I am aware enough, seems that even too aware, that there is handful of crucial issues around the globe, that things I am crying out loud about do not look like easy stoppable ones, but the fact that I keep doing my tiny part of it all, keep giving input I am able to contribute with is the one that lets me sleep at night.
I don’t know how much it usually takes to develop a huge international movement. We all know that UN, EU and all the other tinier ones, including proper IPPF as such, keep fighting with forever pending issues and new questions and problems that seem to rise from nowhere for over than 50 years already and they don’t seem to be close to perfection.
Anxiety and patience are two things I have to work on, have to learn better. Anxiety will help me to draw great plans and future visions and patience - to accept that evolution happens slowly and takes rather small steps. Third thing could be commitment to do anything possible to ensure that YSAFE makes those little steps in the direction of the vision.
That’s my dream. What’s yours?
