“The truth of a thing is in the feel of it, not the think of it.” Stanley Kubrick

Y4PT

While life is developing itself more and more in vertical urban environments, the incredible Youth of the World is manifesting its talents even more horizontally.
Give some Teams a believe and an issue to solve, and everyone will work together, forgetting their religious beliefs and cultural differences and united in the effort.
Then, bring them again to the real world and the divisions will reapply…why?
Because it seems we have to live in a world who thought us to be divided: everyone on its own to perform better than the other ones, to compete and gain more power and money.
Differences were born with the first shells utilized as money ‘exchanges…and voilà, game over, or to better say, let’s start the game!
What we have tried to create at Y4PT, and continuously trying to do, is to generate new spaces and new perspectives, new friendships, were the boundaries are useless.
Bringing back to life the incredible hope that only humanity coming from the inside deep hearts is able to bring to a divided actual scenario.
We are accomplishing, with the help of true helpers, passionate and competent people, what makes us feel alive: we are feeding a static world, centred on power and money making, with stories and ideas bringing harmony and feeling of belonging.
We are enhancing the beauty of souls and wisdoms, all through a long path lasting now since 12 years. All trying to understand why we are on this planet, on this Universe, to understand human history, attitudes and activities, to possibly generate guidance and novelties; to make our human society being again in harmony with the planet that hosts us, bringing joy at the same in the communities we form.

Our special hackathon

Through 1 year full of thousands of e-mails, we were able to create a connection based on positivity, energy, will to work, and compete for Humanity with a common goal.
We started with lot of no and denials, and just our firm will to make it happened, opened the door of a random basis’ selection. Like a domino effect cascade, it involved and generated a will of being part of something  huge, that later on reflected the variety of the 22 cities and 37 nationalities involved. Operators, Universities, Authorities, that , after engaging through thousand e-mails exchanges, were feeling committed to something at the beginning they didn’t know how it revealed itself.
After 18 months of bubbling cities and groups generating ideas, we finally all met in Montreal, like if we knew each other since the Age of Time: hugging each other with the news and jumping of joy to meet again with the core old group. Every time is a miracle. We stay connected.

When we meet we are all just breathing together, naturally: just humans.

I’d love to say a few words and name each of you that shared those moments with me: I will forget some so, please forgive me if I do not name all!!

Beibut, putting aside his country idea to develop on his own the project he won with, opening himself to a bigger adventure. Massimo, the kindest, who made his abilities appear so normal. Emma, determined to push here boundaries and fight to advance her Nation. Kim so young and pushy, driven by a “bigger than her” adventure under the guidance of Mark, so deeply appreciative and collaborative. Thomas, a revelation, with a special communication ability, pure eyes and smile that will make people feeling happy and doors easily opening. Julius, such a loving kind and humble young man, while his mind, absolutely a strong one, proudly representing his country. Maria, a bubbling woman with a brilliant mind, a nanotech engineer, who said a scientist cannot be feminine? Igor, the purest mind’s reader that just through emails was connecting and caring for people. Pablo, the shy guy, not yet realizing to be on board of this big adventure.

Yes, an adventure: every Y4PT encounter is a true surprise, as we do not know how energies and minds will combine.

Gustavo and his brother, appreciating every moment of this connection with sparkling eyes, storing every fact and every memory inside his brain to bring it back to his family and life. Marco, the real prototype of the inventor, a deep loving person with a true committed life and believe in humanity. Ignacio, the grateful, learning every step ahead, who, working hard for his passion is building step by step his new reality. Juan Sebastian, faithful to his country’ image, learning to study and live in a country so different from his one. Under his “cover” of silent guy, a wonderful heart and laughing soul. Thomas from Chile, a mix of cultures showed through its entire figure , making committed efforts to work for the Team and opening to the world. Max, the real representative of his country, making smiles happening on his face everyday a bit more.

Fidel, the gentle inscrutable with a giant heart bringing back memories and learnings, always available to listen and give his presence. André, with his contagious enthusiasm and ability to push his boundaries. Eloi, the real geek with millions of ideas in a bubbling mind. Charles, the silent, absorbing and observing, without still believing what was happening through his life! Saeed, the practical one, able to spot the best things and moves with a real chess mind and eyes. Dejan, the “already formed and fitted” guy, so happy to show his abilities but at the same time discovering a place with no pushing competition. Bruno, the humble, introverted that when rightly solicited expressed a real knowledge and commitment.A straightforward Johnathan with his smile and energy…

Many others were there, many others memories of mine to form layers of humanity, all lasting in my mind.

And add to them the great team of passionate “gurus”, mentors, guides, supporters and friends!

Mercedes, finally able to free her mind from job’s clichés, a reserved Lady with a great understanding of the Field.
Laura, a true enthusiastic being, finally living a complete experience where her artistic, spiritual, mentoring, communication abilities and beliefs were all together in one place.
Sam, able to combine his Transport knowledge with his innovative and driven passion, in a tight schedule where everything was respected, fitting and finding the right place. Able to keep on track for long lasting nights and days!
René, a curious discoverer, full of light and true enthusiasm, combined with a lot of knowledge.

Guys, what a human experience was this one!! Such a beautiful journey we had!!

Rafael , the calmer , the observer, the actor who holds things together, able to spot every microgram of a possible problem, anticipating every move to untie the knots.

Yasmina, which I connected through a receiving energy moment, that got finally back positivity and energy from the experience; and so committed that she worked hard to refill the batteries of everyone because of this superior commitment she felt, and that we all had in that special place.

Friends, my words are reductive, especially because I do not use my language to express all these feelings, but,when people like to connect, only good things and energy can circulate in a space that is at a time physical and not.

And this is exactly what happened: without knowing: every piece of the puzzle was falling in the right space. Everything became possible and doable. You, as pillars, were supporting one each other and a fluid chain of love was forming.

Ideas were taking shape, shaped by an over dimensional energy, love was circulating and hugs were becoming the simplest and easiest form of communication, accompanied by continuous bright smiles enlightening everyone faces, also on the most reluctant ones, per culture and tradition. I saw the best tentative smiles from the more no used to, countries’ representatives.

Gratitude and joy were the most frequent feelings showed by words and eyes, while a high tech world of abilities was concentrating there…

Imagine how people could generate more, if only able to work and create in a positive energy environment.

And this is our Mission, yours now too! For everyone that experienced an event like this one , to continue to bring forward, despite all evil, all greed , all jealousy, all sadness, all negativity, all difficulties, this sane spirit.

The spirit of true togetherness to create advancements in a broken society.

Thanks to all of you, who, as simply spirits, despite preformatted education, you were able to be coherent with your deep self and connect , with no boundaries, with other people.

This is the believe we should all go through, the believe in humanity.

Something more than an hackathon

Learn through love and through passion, to unite universes that were thought irreconcilable, finding out, that, all over the world young talented minds are living to put the basis of an already present tomorrow which we can spot among today reality.

Discretely, humbly. And if we can spot them and bring them all together, all these lights will join in a no barrier present future.

Pure harmony were enlightenment, happiness, energy, gratitude, love, sharing , passion, discipline, consciousness, audacity, are the words and believe me, is not rhetoric.

With this “more than a hackathon”, we broke stereotypes and conventions overcoming our limitations.

We showed the world that events like these can be different, it all depends on the ability of showing more feelings and true love.

You all made real friendship through a series of unplanned connectivity in a soul and human value’s environment: we didn’t only innovate, we enjoyed innovating.

Big brands and advertising Mantras affect the world, and Y4PT is willing to show that there is more to it.

From gambling to shopping, social media or booze, we are becoming addicts: our fast paced societies are taking us away from the truth. We have so much stuff and wealth, so many gadgets and choices, but, is any of it making us happier? Does they fulfil us at a deeper level?

I’ve learned the hard way that the only way out is to look within.

Did you already said I believe? Did you already feel that energy that is making you find more energy also when you do not have more? As you see concretely under your eyes that things are changing, also if it is happening slowly? And that you contribute to the positive change of this world? That you have an influence?

Well, this is exactly what we all were, together in Montreal, and where we will stand together, for the future, also in the worst eventuality of not meeting physically again anywhere else in the world.

Because once experienced , you become addicted to Y4PT! ‘Cause we believe in YOU’th!

A giant hug to all!

Alessandra

PS No words are needed to indicate the trust, the beliefs and the long lasting endurance of my closest collaborators, co-founders Alfredo Barba and the Y4PT Chapters and ex chapters, friends from India, Nepal, Colombia and Pakistan , Italy,  Nabeel Faraz, Juju Kaji, Daniel Perez, Muhammad Junaid Mandoori, Lorenzo Casullo,  that relentless are working in their countries and at different  international level to make a real transformation and create positivity all around them. Without you and your strength, this transformation wouldn’t have been possible.

Transaid is an international development charity. They identify, champion, implement and share local transport solutions to improve access to basic services and economic opportunity for people in Africa and in developing countries. Transaid was founded by Save the Children and The Chartered Institute of Logistics and Transport and our Patron is HRH The Princess Royal. 

 

Charitable volunteers from across the transport industry cycled to Brussels at the weekend, in a bid to raise £75,000 for Transaid.

The 34-strong team had already raised £45,000 by the time they set off on the 340km ride on the 12 September  and are confident of reaching their fundraising target once the remaining sponsorship money is collected.

Riders set off from the Freight Transport Association’s head office in Tunbridge Wells and headed for Dover where they caught the ferry to Calais. Their adventure continued through France where even the most experienced cyclists were challenged by a very strong head wind. The group celebrated the end of this particularly difficult day in Bruges where they enjoyed a well-earned break and glass of beer, completing the final 74 miles to Brussels on September 14, finishing at the city’s iconic Grand Place.

Upon arrival the cyclists were greeted by a party from Y4PT and UITP, where we  put on a champagne and chocolate reception. We have been very happy to give them a moment of reward and fun after such a challenge and great action!

Sir Peter Hendy, a new Trustee!

Transaid  appointed  recently four new trustees with a wealth of experience in the health, transport and logistics sectors to help govern the charity as it continues to grow in size and scope.

One of them is Sir Peter Hendy CBE, Commissioner of Transport for London and  our UITP President.

Speaking on behalf of the trustees, Sir Peter, said “It’s a privilege to be involved with an organisation which implements truly life-changing solutions in developing countries.”

Sir Peter started his transport career in 1975 as a London Transport graduate trainee. In 2001 he served as Transport for London’s Managing Director of Surface Transport, before taking on his current role in 2006. Sir Peter was instrumental in preparing for the successful operation of London’s transport during the 2012 Olympics and was elected President of the International Public Transport Association in 2013. He was knighted in the 2013 New Year’s Honours list, having been awarded a CBE in 2006.

The first Transaid was established within Save the Children (UK) as a voluntary group of transport industry individuals. Peter Linney, who had just retired from a senior position in British Rail, took up the day to day management of Transaid. The British Railways Board provided office space and administrative support. Over the next 10 years, Transaid volunteers, from organisations such as TNT, P&O and the British Army, carried out a number of short-term projects. In those days, the focus was largely on emergency operations, rather than long-term development, and projects included a review of the potential to handle containerised emergency supplies through Mozambique ports and the specifications for an emergency ambulance service in Swaziland.  The transport management handbook for Save The Children was also written.

 

Thinking long-term

In the early 1990’s the founders began to think about the role of transport in development, and particularly how lack of transport impacted on the delivery of essential services such as health and education. Research with the Ministry of Health in Ghana led to the realization that a lack of management skills, rather than a lack of transport, was causing a bottleneck in the delivery of everyday health services.

A two-year Save the Children project started in the Ministry of Health in Ghana in early 1993. This was the first long-term programme of its kind by Transaid and marked a shift in focus towards sustainable development.

The future

Transaid is now beginning to focus more intensively on livelihoods work, based on the knowledge that Africa needs an efficiently run transport system in order to provide better opportunities to trade and make a living. Improving the efficiency, safety, availability and professionalism of commercial transport will create work opportunities in the industry, reduce transport costs, open up trade and make basic goods and services more available and affordable.

This is what is meant by sustainable development, looking at the root causes of problems and building the skills and knowledge of local people to tackle them. It isn’t quick and it isn’t easy, but we believe it is the only way we will make a lasting difference.

However, the amount of high profile natural disasters in recent years has brought attention back to the relationship between logistics and emergency aid and Transaid has played an advisory role in the development of two new, humanitarian initiatives – the development of the new Fritz Institute Certificate in Humanitarian Logistics and providing advice to the new CILT Humanitarian Logistics and Emergency Programme (HELP).

One thing which remains unchanged is transport’s importance to the health and wealth of all nations. Trucks, trains and ships are so highly visible on the world’s roads, railways and seas, but the essential goods and services that they carry, and the millions of people who work behind the scenes to get them where they need to go, remain largely invisible and forgotten.

Transaid has been built on the knowledge that skilled people make transport work. It’s up to us to find ways to build those skills where they’ll make the most difference and to continue to harness the skills of the best in the transport industry.

A few days ago I met Novia Salcedo representatives, whose headquarters are in Bilbao.  At our siege in Brussels, we talked about creating a possible partnership for many interesting different projects , all related to a fundamental issue of these years: the situation of helplessness and youth unemployment which is an unacceptable scourge for the people of the second decade of 21st century.

The idea is to be on board for the International Campaign for Youth Employment Decade 2013-2016 and, secondly, to have young people from Spain developing and collaborating with us on the light of our Employouth tool’ development.

The International Campaign for Youth Employment Decade 2013-2016  is an initiative of the civil society born in Spain,  with an objective to generate an international movement of reflection, thought, debate and action, that provides ideas, content and solutions for the unemployment situation or the situation of no decent employment that millions of youths are experiencing in hundreds of places across the world.
The final objective of this Campaign is for the United Nations General Assembly to declare 2019-2028 ‘Youth Employment Decade’ as an opportunity to drive the economic and social transformation of organizations and countries.

Novia Salcedo believe that the solution to the big problems that global society is facing needs to go hand in hand with big and feasible dreams. Y4PT do believe so, too!

In this dream, action-solution, they suggest beginning with a proposal for economic and social change on three levels – people-organisations-society-, towards one more inclusive. And they make this proposal taking as a guiding thread the integration of youths in the human, economic and social development by launching specific actions on a global scope, compatible and complementary with those of a local scope in order to reduce youth unemployment that we all face across the world. Therefore, they are talking about an important exercise of Social Innovation at a global level. We’d love to be on board with our Y4PT Foundation.

To successfully carry out this ambitious project it is necessary to reconcile many allies,  some within reach of NSF but others not. That is why we need the cooperation of multiple local and global agents, governmental and no-governmental, that go along with us through the different facets of the project, with a multidirectional cooperation model that help us achieve the objectives we are pursuing.

To lay out social innovations of this significance requires a high impact operation, that is exciting and in which we can all be involved. Given the extreme severity of youth unemployment we can no longer look away.

It is time to decide. We owe them answers.

Concretely,Y4PT will be also very happy  to accompany for a long period one or more youth from Spain, selected by Novia Salcedo, in order for them to start learning technical and transversal competencies, developing our Employouth International Job Bank in the field of  Sustainable Mobility. This Youth from Spain will undergo with us thorugh a geographical mobility and an exchange of knowledge with all the other Y4PT representatives around the world and by doing sowe are  offering them a kind of worldwide “ coaching and learning” experience.

Alessandra Gorini

What is the Youth Employment Decade?  

The Youth Employment Decade expects that the geographic area where it is implemented includes municipalities, regions, countries, public and private entities, non-profit and profit organisations, networks related to youth and/or employment, academic institutions, religious institutions, unions, governments, etc. that are developing activities within this framework.

That is, the Decade will take place anywhere in the world where, through different initiatives and activities promoted by the civil society or in cooperation with the public sector, there is a wish to join in the achievement of its objectives, including:

1. Make a call to attention at the highest political and social levelabout the current situation of youth unemployment across the world.
   2. To promote efforts in order to comply with the international commitments entered into with regards to employment and decent jobs.
   3. To open participating spaces and intergenerational and intercultural dialogue among youth and the political and social authorities to address the issue of unemployment with the challenges and the potentials of youths themselves.
   4. Suggest priorities, content and lines of action in the political, social and economic fields to combat youth unemployment and no decent jobs, including gender discrimination.
   5. Point the attention toward policies and proactive activities that guarantee sustainable management of the access of youth to the labour market in the long term, both in terms of quality and quantity.
   6. To promote research, creation of knowledge and interchange of good practices with regards to youth employment.
   7. To undertake action to increase awareness of the society as a whole about the risks and consequences of youth unemployment and its role in the eradication of poverty and in the economic and social transformation and growth of countries.
   8. To achieve the commitment, cooperation and investment from all agents involved during not only the decade 2019-2028, but also beyond.

In the mid-term these objectives will be transformed into results, preferably quantifiable (so as to never again return to massive unemployment, sudden changes of income distribution and generational inequality, indicators of social cohesion and participation, public welfare, no decent jobs, gender discrimination, etc.). And create an organisational structure able to respond and guarantee the celebration of the Youth Employment Decade in the world in accordance with their objectives and results through the activities, projects or programs that are defined for each level -local, regional, national, international- involved in it.

 

When we first heard about Europe on Track at Y4PT we immediately thought… what a great idea! What a great idea to open the mind of young Europeans, to encourage them to discover new cultures and new ways of thinking and to make them travel throughout Europe. So we asked ourselves, how could we contribute to this project? How could we bring the transport related issues to the heart of the project?