OLYMPIC LESSONS FROM TODAY'S YOUTH

International Youth Day

- Dr. Yasantha Mapatuna and Sherina Tabassum

What can young people teach us about how to face today’s challenges? Could this summer’s Olympic Games - an event disrupted by the pandemic and pulled off through massive global coordination and collaboration – give us some answers?

Sri Lanka’s Olympians – five women and four men, all between 17-36 years old –embody this country’s pride. In sporting terms, 36 sounds old, but the average Sri Lankan born this century will live more than twice as long. And rather than becoming international athletes, one in four will work in agriculture, away from the spotlight, supporting their country by producing food for other Sri Lankans, or exporting it to bring in money. Their lives may not be as glamorous but they’re essential – not for their country’s international prestige, but for its survival.

Sri Lanka is a young country, with those aged 15-29 representing almost a quarter of its total population. Despite being well educated, they face heavy unemployment (over 60% of total unemployment for men, and 45% for women; of these unemployed youth, nearly half have completed high school). The agricultural sector, which provides work for so many of them, is facing new and worse challenges than ever before, be they sudden and unpredictable (such as COVID-19) or chronic and recognized (such as climate change). Their future livelihoods in danger, and therefore so is their country since it depends on them to grow its food. And just like Sri Lanka, so are other countries that depend on agriculture, be it directly as growers or indirectly as consumers.