Great Generation: What being part of the Great Generation means to me
Today is Nelson Mandela Day. In 2005 at the ‘Make Poverty History’ march, Nelson Mandela called young people to be part of a ‘great generation’ to work to eliminate world poverty. Here, Sam reflects on what being part of the ‘great generation’ means to her.
Sam has been a CAFOD Young climate blogger and has just graduated from the CAFOD young leadership training programme.
“Sometimes it falls upon a generation to be great. You can be that great generation. Let your greatness blossom.” Nelson Mandela
What excites me the most about this quote is the message of hope behind it. It encourages young people, like you and me, to actually be the ones who bring about change and transformation in today’s modern world!
Be part of the great generation.
You see I used to be discouraged and question what can our generation do. This was until I was asked to be a climate blogger in our school for CAFOD, and then taking part in the young volunteer programme that CAFOD run each year for year twelves. All this has shown me that our generation can potentially be the generation that brings about greatness if we unite together.
Being a young voice in the Houses of Parliament and getting our MPs to sit up and listen and act on our behalf has been one of the highlights of my blogging year. The MPs really do listen.
Nelson Mandela once said,
“Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world.”
Which is very true! So I thought through our schools we could inform people of poverty. It’s interesting to see people’s faces because you can see something touching their heart and the fire that’s lit in their hearts to actually contribute in making a change!
Download our Olympic resources to explore global justice issues with your youth group, class or friends.
I used to ponder when people asked me what inspires me to tackle injustice, until the penny finally dropped and I realised that if everyone was willing to unite and make a change, in the future we can perhaps break poverty!
Also God has blessed us all with different abilities such as leadership so you can organise campaigns, or the ability to write very well which means you can share information through blogs. or even the ability to speak well in front of hundreds of people and that can be a platform to share and talk about the injustice that takes place in our world! If we use those abilities together who knows what we can accomplish.
We are all part of this one world! If we unite together and help tackle poverty we can become a great generation as Nelson Mandela said.
Download our Nelson Mandela PowerPoint and activities for young people.