2019 International Youth Day Message

Education is one of the ingredients of successful and harmonious societies. From the very beginning of our civilization, the passing of knowledge from one generation to another is deemed necessary for our very own survival.  With the digital revolution and the Information Age, the youth today is bestowed with resources, talent and enthusiasm never seen in modern history. The call for inclusiveness and to address accessibility, equality, skills-focused development were being advocated by young people themselves in these recent years.

For our organization, the ATO started as a peer group, with its activities concentrating to peer cooperation on school works and literacy improvement, some leadership acts years ago that built ATO’s vision for education. With the emergence of the youth climate movement, the ATO joined the call with action focusing through education, this led to the launching of the ATO - ClimatEducate Project in April 2016 and gathered one of the best youth volunteers the organization has ever seen, with mostly Global South countries.

With this year’s International Youth Day theme: “Transforming Education”, we recognize the efforts of those youth advocates and also our dear members and volunteers who strived very hard to contribute for an education accessible to all. We look forward that our organization, through cooperation and sharing with other youth networks, will do more for literacy development and education for climate action. 

John Carl T. Alonsagay
ATO President