IF you think that youths are indifferent, and not interested in anything else but a good time, you are wrong.

Young people from all over South East Asia converging at the upcoming Youth Engagement summit (YES2009) in a fortnight at Putrajaya to make their voices heard, and bring about changes they want.

Be it in their personal lives, parents, community or the world, the youths want and are ready to embrace something different. These youths are part of Seachange. Created by youths for youths, it is not a club, a profitable organisation or a secret society.

“It is a movement that directs youths towards the change they are seeking. It is kind of like Earth Hour, in a sense that everyone owns it, they can be a part of it, do something about it and bring youths and youth organisations together,” says Ng Khailee, executive director of Youth Asia, a company that organises youth events.

Over 420,000 youths across the region are already part of this movement that voice out their concerns and opinions on their daily lives to how the world is run.

Youths across Southeast Asia promoted Seachange and YES2009 by posting pictures on Facebook.

“We reached out to colleges, universities, youth organisations and online communities to band together to get all their students and members to say what change they want to see happen.” “Youths can be part of Seachange by signing up at www.youthsays.com. They will be informed of the projects carried out by youth organisations across the region and they can directly contact the organisers to show support or get ideas from them,” adds Khailee.

And to give the group a focus, the 120 (and growing) Seachange partners asked their members these three questions; ‘What change do you want to see in your own personal life?’, ‘What change do you want to see in your community and country?’ and ‘What ideas of campaigns or programmes would you support?’

One of the ways that Seachange members support youth initiatives by spreading the word on Twitter, Facebook and YouTube. These social media sites are flooded with posts, comments, links, video uploads of youths telling other youths about their visions for change, and urging them to be part of the exciting movement.

Their responses, which are collated at www.youthsays.com, will be compiled to produce the Seachange Youth Report, and presented at the upcoming YES2009.

The YES2009 is a platform to create a cadre of engaged, active youths dedicated to making positive changes happen in their communities and in the world.

Change icons such as Twitter co-founder Biz Stone, Air Asia founder Datuk Seri Tony Fernandes, actor/activist Amitabh Bachchan and Live Aid founder Sir Bob Geldof will be speaking at the two-day summit.

Youths are also given the chance to post their questions to these renowned personalities on YouTube. The best questions will then be selected and forwarded to these personalities.

Young people attending YES2009 will not only have the opportunity to listen to these personalities’ insights, but will also be able to interact and engage with their like-minded peers from across the region.

YES2009 organisers sponsored free flights, accommodation, and summit passes for 500 Southeast Asian youths to attend the summit. All they had to do to win the pass was to visit youthsays.com and answer three questions. To increase their chances of getting selected, they could post a video on YouTube of them asking a question to the speakers, tag a photo on Facebook or use the #followseachange hashtag on their Tweets. “But some got creative and even composed songs, poems, designed images related to Seachange and posted them up on Facebook or YouTube,” says Khailee.

There are over 500 video questions to the speakers already, and the number of youths filling up the survey is more than 30,000 and increasing. The Seachange target is to reach one million Southeast Asian youths, and have them post their questions and opinions before YES2009.

R.AGE is a media partner of YES2009.

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