Rise of the generation act

Guest post by Manes Kerschbaumer, founder of Little Helps, an initiative to provide Austrian non-profits with an online stage, so they can present their work & reach more people.

“They don’t participate at a rally, they play hooky!”
“If they care that much about climate, why do they use an I-phone?”
“The youth becomes more and more dull”

Sounds familiar? Those phrases accompany the uprising engagement of young generation, since #fridayforfuture, #blacklivesmatters, gender debates and so on. It’s indeed ironic that we never faced a comparable level of engagement and activism coming from pupils and students in the latest history in Austria, whilst some parts of our society describes them as lazy, politically uninterested and dull. It is being ignored that the protests right now, are nothing else, but the logical reaction to the societal and political neglecting & failures in sustainability & climate politics as well as equality rights during the past 30 years.

But ok, grouching about everyone and everything is a national sport game in Austria, so maybe we should just take the criticism about our “generation act” as an accolade for them, pretending that the whole criticism is another way to say “hey, all things considered – we’re just grouching, because we don’t have bigger problems to face, actually everything’s fine.”

Anyway, it’s a bitter pill that the Covid-19 crisis was a massive wave breaker right in the middle of this uprising engagement. It’s extremely sad, because for the sake and the future of our planet, it’s so important to have young people in the middle of our society, engaging themselves for climate and equity, rather than thinking about how they could possibly buy their first car at the age of 18. We need this activism so much and it was about time that gender equality debates, the fight against discrimination and a fair access to education are finally celebrating a glaze of sex appeal.

That’s why social initiatives like Social Held are so important right now. More than ever we need to support this wave of activism and offer smart, digital solutions for social engagement in times of lockdown and home-schooling. For a better world, and a brighter, sustainable future.

Thank you, Karolina and Aga, for your precious work!