A Pathway for a United World

One Saturday evening, I settled down to watch Elysium, a 2013 sci-fi movie.

- ROSE ALOYSIUS

In the film the year was 2159, and the wealthiest had decamped to a luxurious space station orbiting the Earth, leaving behind all its wretched inhabitants to survive in a diseased, polluted and over-populated planet. That future nightmare so disturbingly resembled our world of radically separated human societies who just don’t care! The film increased my resolve to commit to the DareToCare Challenge that the Teens4Unity and Youth for a United World are promoting worldwide.

The DareToCare project was launched last June. Life had already gone totally online, with Zoom and other social media platforms providing a lifeline to stay connected and try to understand why the whole world was sick. Risa D’Souza, a 14-year-old from Mumbai, was part of a team who presented this ambitious project, part of a six-year plan called Pathways for a United World.

Drawing from the challenges facing today’s world, each year this project focuses on a different aspect of human and social life, sparking action, collaboration and projects in a worldwide network based on fraternity and reciprocity. Through Pathways for a United World, young people try to help achieve the 17 Sustainable Development Goals set by the United Nations to end poverty, fight inequality and injustice, and stop climate change by 2030. This year the project proposes to place the model of “Caring” at the heart of politics.