Hype Sri Lanka on ambitious mission for inclusive, sustainable youth development

By Shihara Ferdinando

One of many problems Sri Lanka faces is the lack of effective youth participation in the national development cycles and the unsustainable nature in which current forms of youth participation takes place. This is a reality for various sectors of the country, including governance, social service, economy, and education. 

While the work that has been done thus far by youth-led organisations is commendable, as a country there’s an untouched potential as well as a vacuum that needs to be filled, about the work sustaining and affecting top-level decision making.

Hype Sri Lanka is a youth-led voluntary social service organisation, better identified as a Youth Empowerment Incubator that strives to reduce the dependency on the conventional bottom-to-top approach by encouraging parallel youth participation in the grass root and top-level youth empowerment processes. 

Hype Sri Lanka stands proud as the country’s first and only Youth Empowerment Incubator, which was founded due to the deep-seated need to facilitate and ensure inclusive and sustainable development of youth within the country. Youth Empowerment Incubation (YEI) is the streamlining of the youth empowerment system of a country, to enable a more effective youth development process. 

This level of effectiveness is achieved through a shift of focus to Top Level Youth Development Processes such as youth policy formulation and youth infrastructure development, which is accomplished through the facilitation of sustainable inter-stakeholder partnerships within the youth development system.

For the past year, since Hype Sri Lanka’s inception, the organisation has been at the forefront of turning this concept into a reality. With the aim of facilitating partnerships and networking amongst the stakeholders of the country’s youth system, Hype Sri Lanka embarked on ‘Project Nexus’. The project enables youth organisations across the island to be connected with one another. In this program, Hype Sri Lanka will act as a nexus point which connects the isolated Youth Organisations and Voluntary Social Service Organisations (VSSOs). 

While Project Nexus tackles pressing problems of the Youth Development Sector by reducing repetitive initiatives, facilitating better distribution of resources, transference of attention from trending socio-economic problems to neglected issues and encouraging youth empowerment incubation, it also enables other stakeholders outside the youth development system to connect with the youth for various activities.

The Independent Policy Tank (IPT) of Hype Sri Lanka is led by a team of Independent Policy Thinkers (IPTs); a focus-driven and passionate set of individuals who have been successful at bringing forth proposals to the youth policy discussion platforms of the country. Such proposals have been made in the fields of education, inclusive development, and gender equality to name a few. Some of the aforementioned work has seen its success in terms of formulation and technicality due to the partnerships that were made with a plethora of stakeholders in the development sector, namely Enable Lanka Foundation, Peace First, and Chokolaate.

Apart from the research and policy aspect of Hype Sri Lanka, the organisation has been able to work alongside notable INGOs such as the International Federation for Electoral Systems (IFES) to counter disinformation and hate speech in the backdrop of the parliamentary elections of 2020, through a social media campaign. The Incubator also worked closely with Women Enabled International (WEI) to organise three national consultations with Women with Disabilities and persons from the LGBTPQIA population of Sri Lanka, on the impact of COVID-19 on these two vulnerable groups. 

By cultivating this level of research and policy level dynamism within the organisation, Hype Sri Lanka has attempted to create a culture where youth discussion on complex and technical issues such as commercial law, constitution, education system, is common. This is an important step towards empowering the youth to be proactive in ensuring sustainable development of Sri Lanka. 

To further the cause of the Hype Policy Tank, they engage in carrying out primary data collection by conducting surveys and compiling reports on diverse topics for the use of the think tank as well as other organisations who partner with Hype. A research facility of this nature is of immense use to stakeholders of different capacities when trying to understand the timely, targeted and coordinated solutions which must be applied for pressing problems.

The constant need to have a culture of growth within the organisation is a special feature of the Hype Sri Lanka. This is achieved by organising internal sensitisation programs any by ensuring a friendly, energetic, and focused driven work ethic. When an internal and external culture of this nature is created, it provides a platform for youth to grow and be empowered sustainably. Providing opportunities to the youth of this nature bring about two notable advantages: the youth are allowed to provide their input while improving themselves and the whole country’s growth is ensured as development can aptly diversify.

While the above barely scratches the surface of the organisation’s many milestones within the past year, it is evident that the work which has been done to date has been multidimensional. It was an effective combination of the dynamic team at Hype Sri Lanka and the support of the partnering organisations which provided the Incubator with the leverage of expertise and the capacity to implement the work in real-time. 

While the output of the projects isn’t always instant, it is a long-term systematic change which Hype Sri Lanka hopes to achieve. The progress of Hype Sri Lanka’s work can only continue and multiply with partnerships of stakeholders, which is why Hype Sri Lanka calls upon all willing and able organisations, companies, and individuals to join with Hype Sri Lanka to further the cause for ensuring inclusive and sustainable youth development in the country. 

(The writer is Director of Partnerships and Networking of Hype Sri Lanka.)