PUTRAJAYA 26th June – The ASEAN Leader’s Interface with Representative of ASEAN Youth took place on 25th – 26th June 2020 in Hanoi, Vietnam in line with 36th ASEAN Summit. The program aim to serve as a platform for ASEAN Young Leaders to share and exchange views on the crucial issues relating to the community, society and country as well as to ensure the awareness and collaboration on youth development.
As a Malaysian youth among 20 youths representing nearly 220 million ASEAN youth take this opportunity to express our profound gratitude to ASEAN leaders for allowing us to speak out the voice of ASEAN youth.
We are delighted to see the time and effort of ASEAN leaders have put into nourishment and development of young people in the recent years. They have enable young people to involve more deeply in activities, to be part of cooperation mechanism, dialogue and policy making processes in the ASEAN region, in term of both quantity and quality, giving young people the opportunity to speak out, be equipped with the skills to develop and unleash their talents in several platform that connect young people with ASEAN community development.
Following the theme of ASEAN Chairmanship 2020 “Cohesive and Responsive”, in the past few days, we have been gathering and discussing the most important and practical issues, which are the most concern topics for ASEAN youth and also ASEAN leaders, namely: Youth Volunteerism, Youth Entrepreneurship and 4th Industrial Revolution Skills for Youth.
The ASEAN Work Plan on Youth 2016 – 2020 is one of the 15 ASEAN Socio-Culture Community (ASCC) sectoral work plan addressing issues on human development, particularly the youth. The year 2020 shall mark the end of the implementation period of the ASEAN Work Plan on Youth 2016 – 2020 and in continued of effort to achieve the five (5) objectives of the ASCC Blueprint 2025 in the area of youth development, a succeeding Post-2020 ASEAN Work Plan on Youth is to be developed.
With reference to ASEAN’s recent development in addressing issues on Industry 4.0 and the result of the First ASEAN Youth Development Index (YDI), the workshop discussed and agreed on two (2) overarching priorities for the formulation of post-2020 work plan, namely : future-ready ASEAN youth through digital skills development and institutionalized youth engagement mechanism, including in policy discourse.
NG CHOR ENG @JESSY
Executive Committee Members of
Malaysian Youth Council