One of the main focus of the Lyon is practically implement the National youth policy of the Sri Lanka. Even It was the major factor to LYON to be established as a Civil Society youth organization. After the formation of the LYON club in 2006, LYON club members were invited by National Council of Swedish Youth Organizations, (LSU) to visit other countries and study their youth policies. As a matter of that LYON members decided organize common platform to discuss about the important of the having national youth policy in Sri Lanka with the all the responsible state holders including the government of Sri Lanka.
At that time Prof. Siri Hettige was the pronoun person who had pointed out the important of the national youth policy in Sri Lanka. He had done National youth survey in 2009. With the collaboration of the Dr. Sagara Chandarasekara , Lyon convinced National youth Service Council to organized a platform to discuss the National Youth policy of Sri lanka. Lyon played the Facilitator role for these initial discussions.
These platform holders convinced the Ministry of youth affairs and skill development on the National youth policy and as a result of that Mr. Dulas Allahapperuma former minister of youth affairs agreed to set up a national steering committee with the leadership of the Dr Shantha Abeysinghe to develop a national youth policy for Sri Lanka in 2012. LYON was a part of civil society representation of the committee. Respectively LYON conducted 2 Asian youth forum in Sri Lanka and hand over to the committee all the suggestions that made by youth representatives from Asian countries for Sri Lanka Youth policy.
In 2014 Sri lanka Government produced the National policy of Sri Lanka with the collaboration of Open university of Sri Lanka.
The Main objective of the LYON is implement programs on youth policy and create awareness Sri Lankan youth on National youth policy. under the principals and value of the National youth policy.
Gender-based Violence (GBV) describes the specific type of violence that is linked to the ‘gendered’ identity of being a woman, man or a person with transgender identity. In order to understand the full meaning of the term GBV we need to first understand the meaning of the term gender.
when we talk about Gender base violence in Sri Lanka its mainly relating to Violence against women (VAW), also known as gender-based violence and sexual and gender-based violence. Sri Lanka still lags behind in gender equality even as 51.8 per cent of the country’s total population are women, with only 35 per cent comprising its labour force, a recent study reveals Women play a very significant role in income generation in the migrant labour force, textile industry and plantation sector. Currently over 23.4 per cent households are headed by women. However, the proportion of seats held by women in the national parliament ‘remains very low’. The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) report ranked Sri Lanka 75th in Gender Inequality.
• TO Understanding the concept of gender, gender stereotyping
• To Understanding GBV , magnitude of the issue and its of root causes
• TO play a practical role against Gender based violence
To achieve these goals, LYON will organize and initiates advocacy programs, debate campaigns, Media and social media campaigns and other relevant activities time to time.
The reproductive and sexual health of adolescents has been recognized as an important health concern and has been the focus of considerable global attention for many years. In the twenty years since adolescent reproductive health was identified as an area for specific action at the International Conference on Population and Development in 1994, substantial efforts have been directed towards understanding and addressing the specific needs of this population. Notwithstanding this, in many parts of the world, the reproductive health needs of adolescents are often poorly understood or neglected especially in South Asian countries such as Sri Lanka where the current paucity of information has been identified as an area of concern at national policy level . Sexual and reproductive health has been a sensitive issue that has been discussed over the years in Sri Lanka. Amid issues such as teenage pregnancies, sexual harassment, child abuse and other crimes increasing, many civil society groups have been instrumental in raising their voices against them. However, over the recent past there have been several instances where women and children have been subjected to the devastating consequences of violence.
Because of these reasons LYON has identified Sexual and reproductive health as a main focus and we have conducted various kind of awareness and advocacy related programs to aware sri Lankan youth on this subject matter and continuously do so.
In the area of political participation, eligibility for national parliament starts at 25 years old or older in a third of all countries. About 1.6 percent of parliamentarians around the world are in their twenties. Young people between the ages of 15 and 25 constitute a fifth of the world’s population, according to UN Youth. Facts prove the necessity of a young generation that is more engaged, that leads toward a higher quality of democratic governance.
Youth are a valuable resource for any country and thus often seen as a hope for the future, change and regeneration. From a global perspective, it is said that, “the young generation is traditionally seen as one of the most dynamic mediums of social change.
However, in Sri Lanka, mainly due to several violent youth insurrections since 1970, youth are sometimes seen as a problem that need urgent solutions and reactions, rather than as a resource in the country’s development process.
Accordingly, youth comprises approximately 21 % of the entire population. In line with demographics of Sri Lanka. Yet they continue to face several challenges, mainly poverty and social unrest, unemployment and lack of opportunities, lack of representation and lack of clarity and continuity in youth policies.
LYON has recognized the important of the youth participation in decision making process from the begging of the organization formation. As a result of that from 2016 LYON has organized a campaign call “vote for youth “ which tries to convince and lobby political leaderships in political parties and the common public on having more youth political participation in local level and national level policy making institutions.
to achieve that objectives LYON has been doing various kind of awareness creation programs and press conferences to aware public to have more youth political participation in Sri :Lanka.
Youth leadership means “training young people as change agents in their communities” LYON believes that it is our duty to trained and give more opportunities to develop their skills for the betterment of their future as well as the country. Form the beginning of the LYON, we have organized and designed various activities for the youth in Sri Lanka. To create more opportunities for the youth in Sri Lanka we organized soft skill development workshops, youth camps and youth exchange programs, Awareness creation programs.
National and international youth exchange programs brings the ideal of global citizenship to life. these programs give young people the opportunity to experience life in other cultures and gain new understanding of the world through travel abroad. As a youth organization we believe that youth should have more space to discover the world and understand the multi-cultural values and norms. LYON has organized lot of national and international youth exchange progams and planning to initiates more youth programs for the future.