For the past two years, I attended the ECOSOC Youth Forum as an individual (online), This time is a little bit different, this is my third time and a first as a Young Leader for UNICEF Malaysia! I'm not attending alone, 'Ariff, Ben, Celine, Chloe, Shana and Kuha are among the young people in the delegation.
Since we need more money to head over to New York in the US to feel the live atmosphere, we are attending the forum online thanks to technology. I didn't stay throughout every session because of the time differences (Malaysia and New York are 12 hours apart). When I first joined the forum, I got sick due to the lack of sleep. I learned my lesson last year and am an expert now this year. I also gave these tips to fellow Young Leaders.
The networking session is something I was looking forward to but we are attending online and there were a lot of hiccups in between. I was looking forward to the mental health networking room when it was first put up and I didn't know why it went off and was replaced with digital transformation, we managed to tie that up with mental health and everyone was firing away! Phew, that saved it!
Just like last year's forum, the Regional Parallel Session was always one of the highlights. Malaysia falls under the Asia and Pacific regions. Kicking off the event was Savi, the emcee of the event with opening remarks from our very own Malaysian, Sharifah Noriza. In her opening speech, localising the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are always a challenge because not all communities can understand the concept of the implementation and the importance of the goals that we are going to achieve in 2030.
Continuous support and crucial partnership as well as education the main factors to contribute to the achievement of the SDGs. For me personally as a person with disabilities (PwD) - inclusion is the key. Let's just face the fact that not all of us can understand the struggles of special needs, it will take time to understand and most importantly the patience to learn at a deeper level. I took two years to look for a job, and now I'm happy with the current one that I'm in now. Inclusion to me being involved at every level will bring our society forward.
On the third and final day, I only watched an hour of the live stream because two days straight of attending caused me digital fatigue. It was time for me to take a rest from the whole event.
That's not all, just right a day after the forum, "Ariff, Ben, Kuha and I chatted with Isara of Japan through a Google Meets call to talk about mental health and the challenges we faced as youths in our community. What really impressed us all was that Isara founded Mindfull - a start-up mental health organisation for people in different forms.
This is not the end but this is the beginning of the journey. I always take a quote from my favourite Disney movie Raya and the Last Dragon "You just have to take the first step even before you are ready"! Lastly, thank you UNICEF Malaysia Young Leaders Program for giving me the opportunity! Looking forward to joining future activities!
