 Next guest we will discuss youth engagement and leadership. So Asma Rabia, you are global focal point at SDG7 youth constituency. Thank you so much for being here. Thank you. Thank you so much for having me with you. Maybe could you first of all kind of share your personal journey and how it has shaped your passion for energy and also youth advocacy? Sure. Hi everyone, my name is Asma Rabia, so happy to be here in this interview to share about my background and my experience in the energy space. So I'm from the Tunisian-Algerian border. Some people mistake for me being Algerian but I'm Tunisian. And yeah, I was born and raised in a very small town. It's like an underserved community that has like a strong tie with Algeria and they call it the land of brotherhood between Tunisia and Algeria. And in my community since a very young age I've been passionate about helping others, finding solutions for my community and of course studying hard because I've always believed that education is what would enable me to achieve those dreams and help my community and other people. And also with the issues in my community I noticed the importance of energy for schools, for hospitals, for households and that's how I got very interested in the energy space. When I wanted to go to college I wasn't encouraged to pursue like a STEM degree, especially engineering and they were like oh it's such a hard path and you need to go and you need to sit for the national exam and then there's an employment in this field. So that was very discouraging for me and I did one year of engineering and I was like oh maybe I need to switch even though I wanted to be an engineer and I wanted to work in the energy space and then I switched to business which is something completely different and that was like something challenging for me to know how I can innovate, how I can find solutions and how I can contribute not as an engineer but as a business person or someone who can ideate or someone who can innovate. How has your background kind of influenced your perspective on the importance of energy, equity and equitable access to energy? Sure, so when I was young I noticed like how each year a lot of my classmates would drop out of school and I would be wondering oh where's this friend, where's this classmate and when I ask about them or when I meet them during certain occasions they would tell me that the conditions are very harsh especially in the dorms or them coming to school and they just decided to quit and many of the girls they got married at an early age and that's something that made me very sad because I believe that they need to pursue their education because that's their hope, that's the hope that they have and then I started to like look around me and analyze what are these issues and I noticed it's an energy issue because if they had at the dorm like good conditions, if they had warm water, if they had heating then they wouldn't drop out of school. This was like a boarding school yeah okay so they were not leaving at home yeah so those like harsh conditions made them quit on their dreams and that's something that made me very sad and then in college in business we had like the competitions and I was always interested to think of solutions related to energy like the Halt Prize, other regional competitions like in jazz and one of the competitions I took part of was Accelerate Mina for Middle East and North Africa with GIZ and my idea was one of the winning ideas and I got the chance to go for a global impact meeting of like innovators from all around the globe and that's something that inspired me a lot and made me believe that I can make a change and I can contribute to the energy transition. So now you are a global focal point at SDG7, the youth constituency, tell us more about your work and what exactly is SDG7? So the SDG7 youth constituency is part of the major group for children and youth, MGCY, which is mandated by the UN General Assembly and for our constituency we focus on mainstreaming youth action in the energy space. Of course the effort of how to say establishing this constituency is not like my credit. There are a lot of people that I would say like the hidden gems of the constituency, those who contributed to establishing it and now the constituency having the success or the impact it has on young people and I really appreciate those young people who put their time and effort because it's not easy when you are a young person building your life to dedicate so much of time and effort into building such such initiative that would impact young people. So with there with me my colleague David, David Arinzi from Nigeria. We are two global focal points. Our mandate is for two years. We also have coordination team with us, regional focal points to ensure there's the regional representation, there are thematic focal points like humanitarian energy, gender, energy access etc. And we also have working groups that will help us address energy issues like policy, monitoring and evaluation etc. Can you share perhaps some success stories where sustainable energy projects significantly improved the lives of people on the ground? Sure. In terms of the constituency one of the successful initiatives we had in the past years was the youth sustainable energy hub and the purpose was to map youth led and youth serving initiatives in the energy space and these initiatives were linked to policy and advocacy capacity building entrepreneurship and business and the projects are very inspiring. They operate at the local regional and global level and also one of the initiatives that inspires me personally a lot. Region project with UNSQUA. It's a project on small scale renewable energy projects in the Arab region and this project especially empowers young females and females in general in the Arab region and listening to the testimonials of this project how women in rural areas say that now they have an income, now they can spend on their families, now they know about renewable energy, now they can use it for their households and their businesses it's something very very inspiring. Why and how should the youth contribute to sustainable energy solutions and the work that you've done? How do you see that? So youth are impacted as I mentioned. Our lives are heavily impacted by energy. Myself when I go back to my hometown I feel even my productivity gets reduced a lot and it's something that I feel even if I go to somewhere with with more like with better let's say equipment or facilities and I would still feel sorry for my community for my family for my friends and as young people we need like good access to energy to be able to do our studies to do our jobs and also for us like to have decent jobs because there's high unemployment rates globally for young people in the Arab region in Africa globally and we need to address this and the energy sector can provide many job opportunities for young people. You were in Dubai for cup 28 how was your experience of youth engagement during cup 28? Sure so cup 28 this year had like a strong representation of young people and especially the children in youth pavilion was very vibrant. I personally was very inspired that I saw young children speaking like their different languages, French, Arabic and there were like translators there helping these children convey their messages and like given the space for young people to connect with each other and to share about the different initiatives they are working on then and they're working their local communities is very inspiring for each other but also giving the space for them to be engaged in high-level discussions in different different pavilions and main sessions it's something very crucial but this should not be just like for the show or talkinism there should be meaningful youth engagement during cup or other processes and the energy space and climate action in general. Based on your experience at cup what strategies do you plan to implement in Tunisia and the Arab world and more broadly to ensure effective youth involvement in addressing climate change and the energy transition? What I've been told that the major decisions are not like made let's say in the big conferences but they are made in those small rooms and I personally want young people like myself to be to be given the space to be part of those small discussions that help or that formulate the big policies so engaging with local actors so for me during cup I connected with actors in Tunisia like the Tunisian Agency of Energy Conservation the Tunisia focal point for UNFCCC to see how we can amplify the work at the national level for youth engagement in energy and climate and we're working on this also with the regional commission for the UN with UNSCCO on how we can have meaningful youth engagement for like for Tunisian for the for the region in general. Just to talk a bit more about kind of the youth climate movement and more generally a few years ago when the fright is for future movement began there was this huge interest in the youth movement and the role of young people how relevant is this notion still today in climate action and I wonder because now we are seeing young people in positions of power decision makers and so why I mean if young people are in a way at the negotiating table why do you get this feeling that we still need more youth engagement is it still relevant what we need is since we are talking about equity and marginalized community and there should be a strong emphasis on representation because for example myself I cannot speak on behalf of someone who's living in a refugee camp and about their conditions so we need to have there are so many young people in this world and we need to amplify their voices more it's not like just me David and other people there should be many and we need those people to come to these tables and share with us their experiences their realities and what's and what are their challenges what are their needs and what are their asks because they are the ones struggling so we need to hear from them that's why we'll always ask for more representation for young people and to focus on equity that these young people did not get the opportunities and they are facing so many challenges within their community to get even like visas to come to conferences to speak or to get funding so we need to address these issues and have more young people to convey their voices essentially it's not because you have a young leader that young leader will cater to the needs of young people yeah we need we need like more more young it's like similar to training of trainers we we try to train other other young people but we also want them to be on these stages to deliver their realities what advice would you give to you know young people aspiring to become leaders and promoting clean energy and equitable access to to energy uh I have many so I would say believe in yourself because there are many challenges that we face especially when we're young and if we are from an underserved community there are many challenges that we face as I mentioned like like access to finance to to go like to certain places we want visas and other challenges even with our families and our communities and cultural sensitivities so we need to like believe in what we want and believe in our passions we also need to be inspired by other young people myself when I was younger I used to always like go and attend TED talks and those like motivational conferences to to listen to people's stories and their journeys and learn and learn from them like even a few minutes ago listening to Demi Lola's story and her personal story is very inspiring and we always like keep learning and we learn a lot from human beings and the other aspect is to also work hard because for for us as young people if we want to make decision makers listen to us we need to be persistent we need to work hard we need to like keep pursuing them we need to keep approaching them we need to keep putting effort and also we need to work together because if as young people we do not work together then our work will not be collective and we will not be able to convince the the decision makers or world leaders to take action in order to move the needle where would you like to see more young people in an advocacy in in politics and in business world where do you think we need the voice of young people most I believe we need it everywhere we need it in advocacy and we need it in the the business space we need like young entrepreneurs and business leaders but we need to equip them first because this is what young people are afraid of always that how to take the first step and that's why we need like mentorship and we need support from senior people people and senior leaders we need to see them in technical positions and we need um we need them the since year at the ministry we have like ministers and we have these like important organizations we need them to give you the space to learn and to have like traineeship internships at their organizations to be able to to see how things are happening and how they can contribute because they will be the ones taking the lead and if they are not prepared then we we can see where the word is going so we need them to have the opportunity to learn and we need them also to convey their voices and we need the decision makers to listen to their voices and not feel oh these are just young people let's just um that what they're saying doesn't make sense what would be um you know your message to decision makers uh in terms of empowering youth uh i want them to really listen uh to young people and not like consider us um as how to say decoration uh in meetings or conferences that we really like have a say and uh we we have our our needs so we need them to uh to include us in their uh in their policies in their decisions in their projects whenever there's an initiative an important project that they are working on that we need them to include young people and to consult us and to include us in their decisions um i again it's the same question that i asked before i want to ask you um so if you had uh this magic wand and change anything for a more sustainable planet what would you do uh i want equity for everyone i want everyone to to have like same access to equal access to opportunities and not to leave like anyone behind because now our world is facing so many crises conflict refugees and many other crises and of course this is linked to um to sustainability and energy and i want everyone to have like a good life everyone to be able to give their full potential especially young people and for them to be able to make their voices heard thank you so much for being here today asma arabia and for sharing your story thank you so much thank you