Actions taken:
Danish Red Cross Youth (DRCY) supports many projects for vulnerable children and youth in both Denmark and internationally. From 2018 DRCY has been included in the DRC/MoFA Strategic Partnership Agreement, and contributes to the overall DRC engagement at strategic and operational level. DRCY is also engaged in relevant RC Movement policy agendas.
Engagement and mobilization of youth is an integrated part of DRC international interventions, and in 10 of DRC’s priority countries improving conditions and opportunities for youth is an explicit focus.
In cooperation with the DRC, the DRCY has in the recent years enhanced its focus on and effort towards supporting children and youth as the drivers of advocacy and implementation of the Post-2015 Sustainable Development Agenda and strengthened community resilience. The DRCY actively engage youth of all backgrounds in defining and assessing challenges and development goals in their communities, and most importantly by supporting their role as change actors, who are able to engage in cross-generational efforts, which can bring about positive change in their communities. As a framework for this change, the DRCY works with a public engagement strategy in which young people across social backgrounds, age, culture and ethnicity are supported to turn the SDG-development goals into everyday implementable goals for everyone.
Furthermore, the DRCY works intensively on facilitating the transition from and across the positions of recipients of service to leaders of social change. As an example the DRCY has made an impactful progress in relation to young people who are or have been institutionalized, hereunder at; hospitals, mental health institutions, prisons and drug-treatment centers. DRCY consider children and youth who have been placed behind closed doors and the exclusion of everyday normality, of one or the other kind, as important contributors with crucial in the process of defining the new steps in the DRCY development plan, and hereunder the leaders of defining, designing and creating new change opportunities for their communities.
DRCY also involves children and youth in the gathering of knowledge, information and design and production of information, learning and peer-to-peer approaches that address key challenges of youth, hereunder Life-skills as building stones to a life as an active citizens.
Human interest story:
Sara is such an inspiration and she is one of the amazing volunteers at the DRCY
In 2018 year Sara was hospitalized due to a severe depression. It was the peak point of a life full of mental diagnoses, medication and homelessness. Since Sara was 13 years old she has been diagnosed with a mental condition. When Sara was hospitalized at the age of 20, her mother did not know how to handle the situation and Sara was kicked out from home. Luckily, Sara received a great support from the staff at the hospital and once she was out, Sara became part of the DRCY as a volunteer – a new place to be the person she wanted to be, a place where she could be something for someone else – someone who might be going through difficulties in life, just like herself. Sara currently volunteers at a homework café for children and youth, in Copenhagen, supporting their academic and social development. Sara is also in the process of developing new approaches to how the DRCY can be of even bigger support when young people live with mental health conditions. Last but not least, Sara has played a major part of the DRCY Campaign JEG ER IKKE MIN SYGDOM (translated: My illness doesn’t define me), in which she, and several other young people who have been diagnosed with severe illnesses advocate to challenges the taboos that young people who live with a diagnosis are challenged by in Denmark. Through performances, radio programs, TV and podcasts the voice and the story of Sara has reached more than 50.0000 people. Recently Sara has been nominated to a price due to her dedication and her involvement as a volunteer and as a campaigner.
Read about, watch and listen to Sara here:
https://www.facebook.com/2200LIV/photos/pcb.265568220783156/265559724117339/
Podcast: https://ungdommensroedekors.podbean.com/e/der-er-et-vindue-men-det-kan-ikke-abnes/
