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Ronagh is ‘UK Youth Delegate’ at UN General Assembly

Ronagh Craddock, paralegal in the Health & Social Care Department recently returned from the United Nations in New York where she was representing UK Youth.

Selected by the Department for International Development, Ronagh accompanied Secretary of State Justine Greening to New York to push for young people to be involved in implementing new Global Goals that have set the world’s development agenda for the next 15 years. One of Ronagh’s aims for this role was to make the somewhat alienating space of the UN more accessible to young people.

Ronagh said:

“So many young people are already working on development issues in their communities, many without even realizing, for example unemployment, food banks, gender equality, forced marriage, and discrimination. What I aimed to do with the role was to make the UN space more accessible to young people at home by communicating my experience using social media. I hoped to make young people aware that we are all part of a huge community of active citizens from all around the world, and these goals are tools for us all to use to hold governments to account for the promises they have made to us. We need to own these goals and make them ours.

I also wanted to communicate to decision makers and businesses that young people are serious about these issues and we are doing things to tackle them – they need to support us. Young people make up 50% of the entire world. We simply can’t expect to achieve ambitious goals such as tackling poverty, inequality and climate change if we leave half of the entire population out of the conversation.”

One key opportunity Ronagh had to communicate this message was at an event ‘Transforming economies: empowering women and girls’ where she was asked to speak on a panel with Secretary of State Justine Greening and Executive Director of UN women Phumzile Mlambo- Ngcuka. Ronagh told the audience of world leaders and businesses:

“You need to stop trying to deliver goals for us without including us in the process. Instead you need to see us as equals and treat us as partners. Young people have vision, ideas and energy to contribute and if we work together the potential for what we could achieve is huge!”

Ronagh has presented several YouTube vlogs and other videos from her New York trip – Visit this YouTube playlist for more.

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