Two Netherland youths , J:Lt Van Schanyik and Teun Meulepas, are building bridges by riding on bicycles to more than 21 countries.
They are interacting with youths to know their priorities and convey their messages to the United Nations in New York in September 2015. Building Bridges began in February 2015 from Amsterdam, Holland, Germany, Belgium, France, Spain, Morocco, Senegal, Mauritania, Ivory Coast, Gabon, Togo and stopped over in Nigeria at the Lagos office of the United Nations. Schanyik told Sunday Telegraph that travelling across different countries was to get messages from youths on issues affecting their lives.
They also decided to reach out to local policy makers. He said that they chose not to pass the night in any expensive place in all their countries of focus because they need to get closer to the youths and to know more about them. He recalled how they met one Mohammed who told them the story of his life.
“I met Mohammed in Morocco and he told us how he left his parents and family because he was looking for money. ‘I want to earn an income myself. I want to help my parents. I cannot find a good job or earn some money. I have decided to leave for Europe,” he recalled Mohammed as saying. He (Schanyik) said two weeks after the meeting, they heard how young people perished while crossing the sea. “We heard of young people dying in the sea.
That could be Mohammed, the young man who was looking for a better future. He did not have better opportunities to get a job in his country.
So Mohammed is not the only man who is leaving for Europe to get a better job. We have 55 per cent youths that are unemployed.” Explaining the rationale behind the tour, he said, “We started this project like a child’s play.
We were drinking one evening and we said to ourselves that why can’t we start a project on building bridges; to know how youths from other parts of the world feel about their lives.
“A project of this kind would interest the United Nations because we are talking about United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. My home government is aware of the project and we are all going to meet in New York.” The two young men said their tour is a voluntary project, financed by them. Schanyik explained that the choice of the phrase ‘Building Bridges’ “was to get other youths for us to build bridges for ourselves.”
Also speaking, Meulepas said, “We did not train for this.
The first time we rode on bicycles, our legs were swollen; but now we don’t feel it. We do not have the skills for riding bicycles. Not everybody can ride a bicycle. We have a lot of friends trying to learn how to cycle.” He said they rode on bicycles for over 17,000 kilometres from Spain to Morocco and had to get a boat to get to Dakar, the capital of Senegal. Meulepas said they also had to cross land borders to get to Ivory Coast, Lome in Togo and then Lagos before heading to Cameroon.
Julio Atti, who rode along with Meulepas and Schnayik from Lome to the UN’s Lagos office, said, “What inspired me on Building Bridges was the involvement of the youths. The voice of the youths is being discussed at local and international levels. “In Africa, the population is 65 per cent. I don’t know about Nigeria but it is close or even more.
In this part of the world, the voices of the youths need to be heard, so long as we are talking about sustainable development.
“We need to be included so that what we are planning today, tomorrow we will find ourselves in it. There is a need for youths to participate in the discussion to contribute their capacity to solving their problems at the local, national and global levels,” Atti said. Speaking further, Atti, who also runs an NGO in Lome, said that in each country they passed through, they held consultations to hear the voices of youths who do not have access to the Internet or are out of school; as well as their history, the realities of their governments and what they think about the sustainable developmental goals that will be adopted in September.
A German Student, Jonas Lassau, who is studying in Scotland but on internship with the United Nations Information Centre, said, “I am part of the Building Bridges. I cycled with them from Amsterdam to Brussels at the beginning of the tour and I am now joining them in Nigeria. I will also join them in Cape Town, South Africa.” Lassau, who is the health safety coordinator of Building Bridges, said that they were on the road for three months and two weeks; and altogether spent 170 days in the 14 countries they had visited.
The Senior Economic Attaché, Netherlands in Nigeria, Mr. Taco Westerhuis, commended the two young men for being courageous in travelling by road to different countries before coming to Lagos.
Westerhuis, who has been working in Nigeria for the past two years, said, “It is a reflection of Netherlands’ vision and the strong relationship between the two countries and that is exactly what the youths have demonstrated.”
Concerning the project, he said that “Nigeria is growing fast in terms of the economy; but it is not spreading widely as expected.” Also speaking, the Country Director, United Nations, Mr. Ronald Kayanja, said, “There is hardship and they want to see that the condition of lives is improved.
Those are the eight goals which are supposed to be achieved in 2015. The Members of the Council will meet to argue on these goals and we shall use as our target for the Sustainable Developmental Goals.” He added, “Some countries have achieved the goals and others have not and now we have difficulties in the new set of goals for 2030. There are 17 goals that will be discussed in September 2015 in New York.
We have realised that young people are not fully informed about what is going on. So, their participation is not encouraging. Building Bridges aims at moving to many countries to draw attention to the use of Sustainable Development Goals. “As they are in Lagos, the message we want out there is, young people of Nigeria, something is happening.
We are developing youths in Sustainable Developmental Goals. This year, at least, we want you to be interested. “The 17 goals that are being developed will be confirmed in September 2015.”
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