The Oro Youth Development Council is born

Today, May 20, 2014 marks the official birthdate of the Oro Youth Development Council.

This moment was born from the efforts started a year before. The genesis of the Oro Youth Development Council began a year before the local elections with some school-based youth hopping from one barangay to the other doing voters education seminars. This youth group which later grew into the Kagayanon for Good Governance -Youth realized that the end goal of doing voters education is not just educating people how to vote but most importantly, what to do after the vote.

Engaging people we put in power (after the election) is the central philosophy of this movement. The OYDC is a movement incubated not within the walls of city hall but outside its walls - in the barangay halls, classrooms, chat rooms, living rooms and coffee shops of ordinary young citizens. With the victory of the new administration, the newly created space for civic engagement encouraged the youth to knock on the door of city hall and present the proposal. The Moreno Administration welcomed it with open arms. And the process of formalization commenced with the City Social Welfare and Development Office facilitating the way. Now that the Executive Order has been issued, the first phase of formalization is complete. We now begin the work of defining a new culture of youth activism in the community guided by the youth development agenda, which we ourselves articulated during our congress. And the next big step is institutionalization – that is making a Youth Code Ordinance that will make this mechanism permanent. That is a long way to go but we are hopeful that this would be our generation’s concrete contribution of building a governance philosophy that anchors itself on people’s participation and empowerment of the young.