On 3-4 August 2023, our Y4E-SEA co-founders, Amira and Jitsai, participated in the V BRICS Youth Energy Summit in the Gauteng Province, Johannesburg, South Africa. The Summit is a part of the South African BRICS 2023 Chairmanship Plan, and was held by the Republic of South Africa’s Department of Mineral Resrouces and Energy (DMRE) with BRICS Youth Energy Agency (BRICS YEA).
The summit attracted 200 young people coming from 19 countries, with Amira as the Indonesia’s and Jitsai as the Thailand’s representative of the ASEAN region. Through high-level thematic panel discussions among the youth energy advocates and South African energy leaders, the Summit has encompassed various urgent issues: energy access and energy poverty, girls empowerment in STEM, just energy transition through education and training, low carbon economy, youth energy cooperation, and the SDG7 energy enablers (i.e., critical mineral, circular economy, and resilient food systems).
As the panelist of the Thematic Session 2: Empowering Girls in STEM, Amira has expressed her viewpoints regarding the gender mainstreaming in STEM professions, particularly in energy engineering and management - the field that have been considered male-dominated. She emphasised that similarly to South Africa, women in STEM living in the ASEAN region also encounter underlying hindrance that prevent them from pursuing engineering jobs or joining the energy workforce. However, she was positive many programmes, scholarship for capacity building, and the intergenerational mentoring efforts for women in their early career have significantly narrowed down the gender bias and wage gap, empowering women in STEM to take on leadership roles, or pursuing their expertise without any restrains from gender stereotypes and discrimination.
In the Thematic Session 7: Enhancing BRICS Youth Energy Cooperation at Global Decision-making fora, Jitsai as the Y4E-SEA representative and panelist, highlighted on the consistent and systematic cooperation among youth energy movement in BRICS countries with other regions to amplify the action and tackle the challenging issues in energy, climate, and sustainability. Also, she pointed out the urgent need to establish a common space to further discuss about Global South Collaboration and find the common priority areas. With different nations with different strengths and opportunities, she hoped that such collective effort will be the key factor to resolve shared issues.
On behalf of the Y4E-SEA, we would like to send our appreciation to DMRE of the Republic of South Africa and BRICS Youth Energy Agency for having organised such a successful Summit. We, as a young organisation representation the voice of youth in the Southeast Asia’s sustainable energy transition, are looking forward to future cooperation and engagement.
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YOUTH FOR ENERGY SOUTHEAST ASIA (Y4E-SEA) – Lead the youth energy transition movement 🌱🌏
Email: youthenergysea@gmail.com
Website: https://www.youthenergysea.com/
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