Why Civic Engagement?
Updated: Aug 31, 2021
Why did I make a blog on civic participation? Out of all the things I could make a blog on- why this?
I make it sound like civic participation is as unappealing, uninteresting and as boring as...3 months in quarantine! But in reality I believe that this topic of civic participation is truly one of the most interesting things I have stumbled upon off late. In fact there are so many fascinating stories, video conferences, Youtube videos and even blogs on it. But the reason I say it like that is because barely anyone I know considers it to be a crucial part of democracy or a fun topic to discuss. In particular no one considers youth civic engagement to be of any importance at all. Which is of course one of the reasons I wanted to make a blog on it. That was not my only motivation though. In fact I have two more!
The first being my mother. My mom cleared out a junkyard which was in the middle of the street to make a 20 ft replica of the Eiffel Tower. The street was soon called the Eiffel Tower street. That itself should be enough to inspire anyone to do something for their community and society. I will be elaborating on this further in a different post, but for now let me quickly list down the various projects my mom has done- replica of the Pyramid of Giza and the Statue of Liberty, Currency park, reusing newspaper initiative.
My third and final motivation was Generation Global. It is a global citizenship programme for young people of ages 13 to 17, that hosts online video conferences with people from across the world who have completed their modules. They have different modules on different global issues such as Wealth and Poverty, Reduced Inequalities and even Civic Participation. The exercises in the module inform and prepare you to engage in an interactive conference where the youth are the ones in complete charge of the dialogue. After completing the Civic Participation module I was eligible to book a video conference. The module's theory itself was so engaging and interesting that it got me super excited about the video conference and boy, the video conference did not disappoint. It made me look at civic participation from a completely different and new perspective and helped me gain a newfound appreciation for it.
