Make the Right Choice – Use Your Voice
Is the voice of the youth powerful and effective? We use our voices to campaign for and to fight for what we believe in. We use our voices to raise awareness and to promote change. Our voices allow us to express our thoughts and feelings, and to show the world what we are passionate about. In recent months, we have used our voices to fight against climate change, and received much media coverage. We protest; leading climate strikes around the world in a desperate attempt to make our countries’ governments listen to us before it is truly too late. However, are these climate strikes enough? How do we ensure that our generation’s voice will still be heard into the future?
Image: Irish Students Rally Across the Country, The Irish Times
As Transition Years, most of us are only two years away from being able to vote. But do young people, who are already eligible, use their vote? Do they use their voices to promote change; to make themselves heard?
Research carried out by the National Youth Council of Ireland (NYCI) in 2011 revealed that 62% of 18-25 year olds voted in the 2011 General Election as opposed to 50% in 2002. This statistic shows that the percentage of younger voters has increased and was expected to rise again when statistics become available for the 2020 election. The Irish government even changed the day of voting to a Saturday for the 1st time since 1918, allowing more young people to vote. However, it now appears, according to an exit poll carried out by Ipsos MRBI, that the percentage of young voters failed to increase as previously expected. If we want to prove that our voices matter, we need to use them. When our time comes to vote, we need to be the ones to change the statistics. We need to make our voices heard!
Image: “Go Vote”, Vector Stock
A vote not only shows our desire to make change; it gives us the opportunity to support those who share similar passions.
If we want to affect change in this world, we need to use every opportunity available to us. We need to make the right choice – the choice to vote. We need to use our voices. Soon it will be our turn to vote in elections. But the question remains; what will we choose to do with our voices? Will we choose to be heard through our votes or will we have lost our passion and the spark that drives us to change the world for the better? Will our ideals change along with our priorities as we age? In two years’ time will our focus and passions have changed? Will we still want to fight for climate action; or will we have lost the fire within?
We need to promise ourselves, that no matter how much we grow and change, we will always keep fighting, we will keep using our voices, and we will continue to campaign for our world.
We are the youth of today but the adults of tomorrow and we cannot allow ourselves to become complacent about important issues.