Rising Voices: Our Region Through the Eyes of Youth

Reflections

From time to time, we feature the thoughts and feelings of young people on matters close to their hearts. Here’s Malique Auguste, Trinidad and Tobago Child Rights Ambassador, on leaving our mark on the world.     

 Collaborating on Unfinished Paintings

Ladies and gentlemen, please allow me to tell you a story. Initially, many, many years ago, there was once a single, large, white canvas being passed around and each painter that got a hold of it would leave their unique mark via the stroke of a brush. None of these artists could predict the ultimate outcome but they left their mark, nonetheless, hoping desperately that however little they may have nudged the direction of the finished work, that it was for the better. As time passed, however, the canvas, limited in its size, grew full. The painting was near complete.  

Yet, the observers, those painters that would have made more additions had space permitted, were not satisfied with this “completed” artwork. Many proposed to daub the entire canvas in white in order to start anew and a few tried, but they soon found that the canvas was much too large for any single artist to cover in a single stroke. Instead, they opted to continue painting on it, allowing what had gone before to form the basis of the masterpiece that they’d create. They agreed that what lay on that canvas was an artwork that would never be completed but instead, be perpetually improved upon by the generations that followed. In this story, we are the painters, and the world in which we inhabit is the painting.  

As leaders, painters who create the world around us, you oftentimes devote your entire lives to garnering the experience and knowledge required to make a single momentous decision, to cast your stroke in a way that will have a lasting impact on the world. However, the decisions which you make will affect generations to come and thus it is only fair that the youth, those that will have to bear the consequences of these actions, have a say in the decision-making process. 

When you leave your mark on the canvas, let it not be one that the youth hurry to cover up because, as we know all too well, what you leave right now will bleed through to the surface layers, even if the youth decide to paint over it. Why then should you only congregate and make decisions amongst yourselves? If the youth are the ones that will have to leave their mark after you, then should you not do everything that you can to ensure that what you leave on the canvas properly forms a basis for them to create a better future?  

In this newsletter, and the ones that follow, you will hear from esteemed leaders, experts in their respective fields, but you will also hear from the children, the youth. You will hear their pains and their triumphs, their aspirations and their beliefs. I am not asking you to bestow upon them a paintbrush at such a tender age. I am not asking you to blindly do exactly as they say. Instead, I ask that you let your decisions be not what is the best for yourself but what is the best for us all, and the only way to truly know what that is, is to ask the youth, “How would you paint?” 

Thank you.