Musa Mdungase is Senior Specialist For Education with the African Youth Union Commission.
Sustainable Development Goals are a call to action to end existing inequalities and to work together towards a shared prosperity. We all have a role to play in transforming the world, and contributing to the Sustainable Development Goals gives us an opportunity to do so. It takes us one step closer to realizing our potential as the people of world when we work towards common goals. We cannot sit idle when the world needs us to act now!
We need to invest more in education in emergencies, and we cannot underestimate the role young people play in the materialization of SGD 4 and its targets. As more and more organizations incorporate Sustainable Development Goals into their everyday work, the need for the implementation of solutions increases. This means we need less talk and must focus more on the implementation of ideas and solutions. Young people are the ones that feel the consequences of the inaccessibility of education due to being caught up in emergencies and protracted emergencies, so it only makes sense for young people to be at the very core of discussions, programmes, solutions, and the implementation process.
Our dedication and commitment to SDG 4 (Quality Education), exacerbated by the ever-growing levels of inequalities, must bring us together to be agents of change. We wake up every day to a huge majority of learners/students denied access to quality education because of historical and structural inequalities.
In South Africa, we have a saying “Umuntu ngumuntu ngabantu”(I am because we are). It is from our collective responsibility that our passion as young people was born.