Liberal Youth Guilds – Sri Lanka
- Details
- Published on 27 January 2011
Liberal Youth Guilds or LYG’s as they are commonly known were established in 2004 as the district chapters of the Institute for Democracy & Leadership (IDL) and are entirely comprised of youth volunteers. The membership of the LYG’s are the youth who have participated in various civic education programmes conducted by the IDL island wide. Within a short span of 4 years LYG’s have become a force to be reckoned with. Not only have they offered a viable alternative in the form of liberal values to the rural youth, hitherto easily lured by extremist rhetoric, but also given a real insight to what “liberalism” means. In this context LYG’s have launched the project “Liberal Village” as their programme for 2008-2011. Under this concept the LYG’s have identified some “village cells” where they have members to introduce simple liberal concepts that could be applied to in their day to day life. The concepts market economy and private enterprise, tolerance, social responsibility, democracy, etc, will be put in to practice at these Liberal Village cells.
This program has been imitated as a pilot project and will be expanded in 2009.
In the year 2008 LYG’s have expanded in to several areas increasing the number of guilds to 35 with a membership of around 2000 members.
LYG’s major achievement during the past year is the establishment of the National Secretariat. The new secretariat situated in the Matara District in the southern province is equipped with all the modern facilities including communications, library, conference and recreational.
Members of the LYG have been politically active in this year. There are 4 Local Authority members and three Provincial council members among the LYG membership. One Provincial Council Member was elected at the recently concluded Provincial election.
LYG’s have conducted several activities including workshops, residential camps etc, during the past 10 months including a Capacity Building workshop under LYSA programme. They have planned several more activities before the year end.