The Bhutanese Leading the way.
Youth Caring Community (YCC) in collaboration with Nazhoen Lamtoen will be marking the International Youth Day on 11-12 August, highlighting the theme “Safe Spaces for Youths”. The day will also recognize and award outstanding young leaders.
The two-day event aims to create safe and exciting platforms for the youth to make the right choices, and inspire them to have a strong spirit of volunteerism to realize their higher purpose in life, promote and strengthen youth-adult relationship, and more importantly to help individuals realize that small deeds will go a long way in shaping the nature of our societies.
YCC is an initiative by a group of young individuals from diverse educational background to help in creating better and interactive spaces for the youth in the country. Nazhoen Lamtoen also holds a similar mandate, to bring the youth in the forefront by building social protection for the vulnerable children and youth in Bhutan.
According to the organizers, the National Youth Awards will be conferred to young people between 11-25 years of age, who have demonstrably excelled in different fields of
developmental endeavors and social services. “These young people are commended for their dedication to excellence and are held up as role models to other youths. Nominations for the candidates for awards have been based on the eligibility criteria and a rigorous selection process with the juries’ guidance,” said Namgyel Wangchuk, Secretary General of the event.
He further added that such an initiative for the event is driven by the youth, for the youth to help built the leadership qualities in the younger generation.
“The two-day event will acknowledge and appreciate our youths, irrespective of their physical state, education, environment, employment status and their intellectual capacity. As every child needs a safe space to develop with appreciation and acknowledgement, they will be further motivated to keep working towards helping the community, thereby creating a safe space for themselves and for the world at large,” said Namgyel Wangchuk.
The event will be run on two concepts: change maker’s day and JOMO day. “Change maker’s day will include meeting and greeting between the change-makers and action-takers of Bhutan, information sharing session and entertainment performances. And on the second day, which will be called the JOMO day, we will mainly focus on recognizing the outstanding individuals who have put tireless effort in the development of community or youth,” said Ugyen Tshering, one of the coordinators.
The awards have been categorized into six sections instead of three sections- Youth Volunteer Award, Youth Community Group Award, Creative Youth Individual Award, Creative Youth Group Award. Two special categories of the awards are called Living our Values and the North Star. “However, we will be conferring awards for 4 categories, as 2 categories lacked adequate and competent applicants,” said the organizer.
The North Star award will be conferred upon an individual who has demonstrably excelled in different fields of developmental endeavors and social services towards the youth. “The recipient will be commended for his/her dedication to excellence and the youth can look up to the person as their role model. This special award category has been judged by 30 competent juries from around the country,” said Namgyel Wangchuk.
According the the organizers, the event has been planned over a period of time so that all applications was assessed thoroughly by judges from various professional backgrounds such as, writers and authors, diplomats, civil servants, student leaders, performing artists, teachers, journalist, and musicians.
“After a meticulous and elaborate examination of all profiles and evaluation forms from all the judges involved in the preliminary selection, and the final phase carried out by our chief judges, Michael Rutland and former Member of Parliament, Sangay Khandu, we finally have the winners. However, after careful judgment, two award categories have been deferred due to poor quality turn out. The two award categories are Creative Youth Award and Creative Youth Group Award,” said Namgyel Wangchuk.
The event will be held at the Coronation Park in the capital, which will house different stalls like, the food zones, initiative zone, game zone, k-pop zones, karate display, street magicians, live music and live radio station, and lots of other family friendly events. The two-day event will also see exciting and entertaining programs like, the guitar flash mob by renowned local musicians, live music, parades, stilt walkers, drama, among other educational programs.
