Project Proposal - National Youth Movement for UN Post- 2015 Development Agenda.

Project Proposal

National Youth Movement

for UN Post- 2015 

Development Agenda.

“Youth Led Sustainability”

An Initiative of

National Youth Services Council (NYSC) – Sri Lanka

                                                                              

1.0 Introduction

1.1 The National Youth Services Council

The pioneer public sector organization working towards the development of the youth in Sri Lanka to become well-functioning, independent and valuable citizens who will contribute to the national development. The NYSC focuses more on their personal development with creating conducive environment to become youth leaders at the grass root level. The established working structure for this is the youth club network in Sri Lanka which has over 10,000 youth clubs in all parts of the country at the village level.

More Info - www.srilankayouth.lk

1.2 Post 2015 - Millennium Development Goals

Enormous progress has been made towards achieving the MDGs. Poverty in the world continues to decline, more children than ever are attending primary school, child deaths have dropped dramatically, access to safe drinking water has been greatly expanded, and targeted investments in fighting malaria, AIDS and tuberculosis have saved millions. 

The MDGs are making a real difference in people’s lives and, with strong leadership and accountability; this progress can be expanded in most of the world’s countries by the target date of 2015.

After 2015, efforts to achieve a world of prosperity, equity, freedom, dignity and peace will continue unabated. The UN is working with governments, civil society and other partners to build on the momentum generated by the MDGs and carry on with an ambitious post-2015 development agenda.

The MDGs have effectively forged a global consensus and mobilized public support for eradicating global poverty. However, they were narrow in scope and did not sufficiently address the specificities at the country level. The MDGs put great emphasis on social spending, and have the agenda transparent and focused, but this approach brought an oversimplification of the policy agenda. Furthermore, the world is now confronting a series of challenges, both old and new, which requires new policies and international frameworks that: generate a more balanced distribution of both the benefits of globalization and the responsibility for its costs, consider the interdependence among issues and enhance coherence at various levels, and pay increased attention to inter-temporal decisions in order to manage risks and improve security of achievements accomplished.

1.3 Why Youth for Beyond 2015 Development Agenda?

The world is looking at bold and concrete decisions that will enable policies, funding and political will for sustainable development. None of this will be possible without the crucial contribution of civil society and, in particular, youth, with half the world’s population under 25, young people are not only the most affected by negative consequences of unsustainable development, but they also have the greatest capacity and energy to deal with those challenges and work on practical solutions.

Youth Beyond 2015 is a collective of young people coming from different backgrounds and different part of the country to advocate for a youth centered post 2015 development agenda.

1.4 Why Sri Lanka should be part of it?

The 1/4^th of Sri Lankan population is composed of Young People, and rapid growth of the young generation have become the crucial stakeholders for the countries development. This National Youth Movement is composed of young facilitators and a volunteer team who represents different organizations and with a strong project background & diverse international team building experience committed to achieve the goals of the campaign.

1.5  Sri Lanka : Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow

SRI LANKA, a South-Asian island state located in the Indian Ocean, is also known as “The Pearl of the Indian ocean”. It’s easy to see why: Sri Lanka’s ecosystems contain a vast biodiversity including rainforests, grasslands, rivers, wetlands, freshwater bodies and marine ecosystems. The rich array of fauna and flora places Sri Lanka among the world’s top 18 biodiversity hotspots. UNESCO has designated four natural forests in Sri Lanka as UNESCO World Heritage Sites, namely : Sinharaja Rainforest, Knuckles Mountain Rage, the Peak Wilderness Sanctuary and Horton Plains National Park. These forests are globally important and provide habitat for an exceptional number of endemic species of flora and fauna.

Historical accounts suggest that more than 75% of Sri Lanka was once covered by forest. But since the British colonial era, there has been mass-scale deforestation largely for agricultural and urban expansion. Infrastructure development, destructive logging and encroachment even of protected areas continue to fuel deforestation, resulting in a shocking reduction of Sri Lanka’s closed canopy of forest cover to 22.22% of the country’s total land area in 2007. The good news is that Sri Lanka has set a target of increasing the country’s forest cover to 33% of the land area by the year 2016 . Thus, it is of importance to Sri Lanka to preserve its natural biodiversity.

With a rich history dating back to some 30,000 years ago, Ceylon (Sri Lanka) was ruled in ancient times by monarchs, most notably of the Sinha royal dynasties that lasted over 2000 years. The earliest-known inhabitants of the island were probably the ancestors of the Wanniyala-Aetto people, also commonly known as “Veddahs”. Veddah life style is still simple and unostentatious; most of their activities are nature-blended and minimalistic. They are hunter-gatherers, living in simple thatched mud huts. The structure of the ancient village was made up of a wewa (tank/reservoir), dagaba (temple), paddy fields, a small forest and a village meadow. These villagers were more or less self-sufficient in food, milk and brackish water fish. The inter-village trade was confined to few goods such as spices, salt and ornamental goods that were brought into the village by travelling traders. Culture and Buddhism played a major role in shaping the traditions of the day. Some of these included the Kariya, a communal voluntary participation in agricultural as well as other social activities and Attama which is a common system where one's labour is offered in agricultural activities and in return the farmers offer their labour in cultivation. Also, there were water conservation systems in place such as Bettma, Tattumaru, Kattimaru and Kanna meetings held before each Kanna.

In 1505 the Portuguese took possession of Ceylon until the Dutch India Company usurped control (1658–1796). The British took over in 1796, and developed coffee, tea, and rubber plantations and thus began the transformation towards urbanism and industrialisation. In 1948 Ceylon gained independence. From 1983 to 2009, there was a civil war against the government by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), a separatist militant organisation who fought to create an independent state named Tamil Eelam in the North and East of the island. On 19 May 2009, the end to the insurgency and the defeat of the LTTE was officially declared.

Sri Lanka is finally free and most importantly enjoying peace. Currently, we are in a very important stage of economic development and reconciliation, determinedly catching up with the GDP rates that were hampered by war. Sri Lanka is becoming one of the emerging economies in the Asia. It has shown 8% GDP growth just two years after the conflict, despite the global economic downturn, and economic growth is expected to be 8-9% in the next few years.  Sri Lanka has gained the middle income ‘emerging market’ country status with its Gross Domestic Product reaching to about $50 billion from just $24 billion in 2005 . Sri Lanka plans to build up foreign exchange reserves to over $10 billion by 2013 and foreign exchange reserves hit a record 6.6 billion dollars in 2010, according to Sri Lanka’s Central Bank. The latest calculation of poverty indices shows that the poverty level of the country has further declined from 15.2% reported in 2006/07 to 8.9% in 2009/10 and the inflation rate has gone down to 6.9% in mid-2011 .  Tourism has rebounded with a 48 percent increase in 2010 compared to 2009.

Yet, amidst all the economic booms, Sri Lanka today faces multiple challenges, such as the impacts of climate change and natural disasters, unemployment, rapid tourism and infrastructure development, and destruction of vital ecosystems. Measures are being taken to address these issues. However the youth of Sri Lanka are taking on the responsibility for change. We are educated as the country enjoys more than 90% literacy, due to the free education system, and we are rising to the challenge of making a change in the sphere of environmental, social and economic sustainability.

In brief, using our age-old traditions will help us to achieve a better degree of sustainability. If we are to see a better future, it is important that we learn from history.

2.0 Key Objectives

·         Enhancing the Youth Participation to the post-2015 development agenda and Rio+20 outcome via

·         Consulting with children and youth on post-2015 development agenda via local level and National youth consultation process and developing a national youth report at the end of the campaign

·         Empowering Young People to initiate grass root level projects to achieve MDG Goals

3.0 Methodology

A two day Training for Trainers will be carried out in Colombo for selected 50 young facilitators from the 25 districts (Two per each district).Facilitators should be experienced in working with young people, they could be existing members or volunteers of the National Youth Services Council or volunteers from other partner youth organizations to support the facilitation. The diversity of the consultations will be strengthened if facilitators delivering the sessions have diverse backgrounds. As suggested above, it should be ensured that the facilitators are young people, and ensured that there is a good gender balance.

These the facilitators will organize consultative workshops (Preferably two day workshops) in their respective district, with the participation of young people from that particular area. Objective of these workshops will be to get the ideas and inputs from youth on "Post 2015 development Agenda".

.

Final report of this series of consultations will be presented at the World Conference on Youth in 2014 under the theme "What Sri Lankan Youth Really Want Beyond 2015"

4.0 Administrative Structure

Organizing Partners (Ops)

Will consist a team of 10 members who will be the main coordinators of this campaign. All administrative, logistics, strategic planning and other important matters will be dealt by this team. This team will report to NYSC and facilitate the entire campaign. The OPs are youth leaders who are experienced in the field of youth activism and who are inspired to make the voice of youth be heard in the country.

Stakeholder

This will consists of youth led organizations, Youth NGOs, Youth Networks, Young Business Professionals, Students from colleges and universities, Disable young people, Young Journalists, Under Privileged  Youngsters etc.  in Sri Lanka who would to like to contribute to the initiative. They will be consulted for Policy discussion.

Facilitators

The facilitating team would consist of youth facilitators from different parts of the country that would work and consult with other youth in their respective regions. This key group of facilitators will be the backbone of the youth network of the campaign. They will organize the district consultations in their respective districts. The facilitating team consists of 50 energetic young leaders which will be selected in transparent process. The facilitators will be trained at a Training for Trainers (TOT) residential workshop before the begging of the district consultations.

6.0 Timeline

Activity

Duration

Dec-12

Jan -13

Feb -13

Mar-13

Apr-13

May-13

Jun-13

Jul-13

Aug-13

Sep -13

Oct -13

Nov-13

Dec-13

Jan-14

Getting approval  for the project proposal

Recruiting youth facilitators

Conducting TOT for the youth facilitators

Conducting District consultations

Obtaining youth views on Post 2015 agenda through other mechanisms

Analyzing Data gathered through various sources

Preparing the final project report

Submission of the final report at World Youth Conference 2014

7.0 Budget

Budget for Post 2015 Development Agenda Sri Lanka
Program	Item	Sub Item	Qty	Unit Price (Rs)	Total Price (Rs)	Total Cost(Rs)
TOT program	Participant Material	Conference Material	50	500.00	25,000.00
		Lunch	50	600.00	30,000.00
		Refreshment	50	200.00	10,000.00
	Logistics	Equipment Hiriring	1	15,000.00	15,000.00
		Other material	1	7,500.00	7,500.00
		Transport	1	12,000.00	12,000.00
		Micelleneuos	1	10,000.00	10,000.00	109,500.00
Consultation	Participant Material	Consultation Material	30	300.00	9,000.00
		Refreshment	30	250.00	7,500.00
	Logistics	Equipment Hiring	1	15,000.00	15,000.00
		Other Material	1	5,000.00	5,000.00
		Transport	1	12,000.00	12,000.00
		Micelleneous	1	10,000.00	10,000.00
		Cost per consultation			58,500.00
		No of consultations			25	1,462,500.00
Special Consultation	Participants Material	Program Material	50	300.00	15,000.00
		Refreshment	50	300.00	15,000.00
	Logistics	Equipment Hiring	1	7,500.00	7,500.00
		Venue Charges	1	10,000.00	10,000.00
		Other Material	1	5,000.00	5,000.00
		Transport	1	15,000.00	15,000.00
		Advertising	1	2,500.00	2,500.00
		Micelleneous	1	10,000.00	10,000.00
		Cost per consultation			80,000.00
		No of consultations			5	400,000.00
Stakeholder Meetings	Participants Material	Program Material	50	200.00	10,000.00
		Refreshment	50	200.00	10,000.00
	Logistics
		Equipment Hiring	1	15,000.00	15,000.00
		Venue Charges	1	5,000.00	5,000.00
		Other Material	1	3,000.00	3,000.00
		Transport	1	12,000.00	12,000.00
		Micelleneous	1	8,000.00	8,000.00
		Cost per consultation			63,000.00
		No of consultations			3	189,000.00
Administrative Costs		Meeting Logistics	1	15,000.00	15,000.00
		Project Management	1	25,000.00	25,000.00
		Blog	1	15,000.00	15,000.00
		Communications	1	10,000.00	10,000.00
		Transport	1	30,000.00	30,000.00
		Micelleneous	1	40,000.00	40,000.00
						135,000.00
Total campaign Costs (LKR)						2,296,000.00
Notes:
TOT Program Budget
25 consultation workshops across the country (Give details)
5 special consultation programs (Give details)
3 stakeholder events (Give details)
Admin costs to project manage the development agenda

Organizing Partners (OPs)

-         Sikander Sabeer

-         Jayathma Wickramanayake

-         Sahan Hottatuwa

-         Thamara De Silva

-         Mohamed Husni

-         Kusala Kumara Fernando

-         Parasuram Niranjan

Contact Info:

National Youth Services Council (NYSC)                                                                     

No.65, High Level Road, Maharagama

Web Site : www.srilankayouth.lk

T.P : 011-2850986

E- mail : info@srilankayouth.lk