by Jerneja Zavec, Journalist, Eslovenia
Sebastiaan Rood, youth representative at European Affairs in Dutch Youth Parliament is one among many youngsters engaged in different problematic related to youth. One of the most important, yet very much ignored, is youth unemployment, which causes general unsatisfied feelings in the national as well as in the European policies. Sebastiaan Rood was also one of the 38 participants at the workshop organized by Youth Future Think Tank; which took place on 9 May in European Parliament, in Strasbourg. His critical posture on the problem of youth unemployment was recorded on the spot.
“The ideas which I liked the most were two: on the one hand education, to make education more fitted to the needs of the young people and needs of their ambitions, to for example get a sort of job”. Sebastiaan continued that this aspect is important in order to assure and assist that “one’s dreams become reality”. Exactly by educating young people and let them have dreams, they will come up with their own idea for the job, here is vital meaning to make sure that youth is engaged into the enterprise system, whereas the environment is open for new investments, exactly youth ideas. “If there is no possibility to go into one conservative company, they could say ‘It doesn’t matter to me because I’m doing it myself and creating my own company’, and they have the possibility to employ themselves later on, employ other young people, etc. So, these two ideas (education based on the need of young people and investments into young entrepreneurs) are the ones that I liked the most”, summarized Sebastiaan.
Sebastiaan continued his thought on how educations could be based on the needs of young people: “That’s a good question. I think one of the main important things is: not only to talk with the board, but to have youngsters in the boards of education institutes, because at this moment they are talking with, but not having the possibility to take responsibility for creating programme. And youngsters, even in the European Parliament, there are two young people member of the European Parliament, only two out of the 750; and to be honest, if you ask me that’s ridiculous! I mean two out of 750! And if you look at the European Commission, I truly believe that there are a lot of nice, excellent people, but at the same time they are all male, grey and over and over experienced. Where is there a young person?! I’m really inspired for example of the Austrian minister for foreign affairs [Sebastian Kurz], who’s 27, and who is really professional. Showing that your people can take responsibility, and can take their place in the society, because we are curious, we are willing to take responsibility, and we are willing to be part of this positive change, we are willing to work for it! And I think this attitude of us really willing to be part of the change and investing our own time, perhaps money, perhaps other things like this should be much more appreciated”.
Sebastiaan Rood, youth representative at European Affairs stressed for the conclusion that “it is very important to take young people into account, as we see already a lot of young people in boards and they can serve as a role model for taking the responsibility. If there is a possibility for youth to show them [to elderly], then we can take this responsibility, but then there are here experiences, the youngsters need to have in order to gain certain position, which they will not get because the employers don’t give the possibility to achieve the board position. The young should represent themselves”, states determined Sebastiaan, as a kind of motto.
