Jordan Abdi, Director on the Executive Board of Future Leaders Network
The Y7 is the youth engagement group of the G7, an international summit of the seven largest advanced economies in the world. The purpose of the youth engagement group is to highlight the most pressing issues affecting young people and to connect with young leaders in order to solicit their solutions to tackle these challenges. The G7 countries, including the EU, represent nearly a billion people, of which just under 40% are under 30. It serves an enormous contingent of the world’s diverse youth populations.
However, despite that vast array of cultures and differences, there are topics and concerns that cut across national boundaries. From climate change to the technological revolution, young people are not short of major issues that the next generation need to tackle and it is in the face of these challenges that we can hope bring people together. This year the French Organising Committee, Open Diplomacy, have chosen to make inequality the central theme of the summit, a growing issue across the world.
The Y7 Summit is a fantastic opportunity to provide a legitimate platform to young leaders such that they can bring their agenda to the global stage. Too often it is the case that the voices of young people are dismissed, and they are excluded from setting the agenda and finding solutions to modern problems. The Y7 Summit enables delegates to confront the big issues and bring back to their respective countries a new energy and set of ideas that they can leverage into real change.
The Future Leaders Network prides itself on cultivating and nurturing young leaders in the UK, and we are really excited about what this year’s UK delegation will bring to the table. We look forward to reading the 2019 Y7 Communiqué, and hope that the delegates from across the world will use this platform to enact real change in their respective countries!