SUARA

Youth, a prominent religious figure has reportedly said, is that period of life when one has the time to make plans about one’s life. More than this, , we can posit, youth is that period in life where one has the time to both make plans and realize those plans about one’s life.

On September 1994, perhaps prodded by such a basic conception of themselves, young people from various youth and students’ organizations representing different parts of the Philippines held a caucus to reflect on and rethink the nature of the “youth”, their concerns, interests, aspirations and the challenges that face them today.

Among others, the caucus tackled the issue of existence of varied youth organizations and the lack of of fruitful coordination among those formations- coordination which the group deems an important factor in pursuing the interests and welfare of the youth, in preparing them to create and sustain a just and progressive society. The caucus participants, reviewing their conceptualization of the so called youth sector, posited that though the sector’s composition is “transient” or “fluid” relative to other social sectors, certain youth concerns are not-and these form the basis upon which youth organizing may be carried on and reinvigorated.

Such realizations united the caucus of young citizens and leaders to form a national alliance of democratic youth which they called SUARA.

What is SUARA?

We are SUARA (I was a SUARA)
The VOICE of change.
The VOICE of Youth.

SUARA-the word comes from the Malay language that means VOICE. Why voice? We see ourselves as articulators of our peoples’ aspirations for freedom, justice, socio-cultural, political, and economic empowerment and democracy…for honest and fair relations among genders, peoples, of various cultures…for sustainable development.

We articulate too, our own visions, ideas, hopes, pains…our laughter, our faults, courage…, our pride in our people and ourselves.

We are for social transformation. We are progressives.

We are SUARA.

Principles of SUARA

1. SUARA shall work for holistic empowerment of the youth.
2. SUARA shall uphold the right to self-determination of indigenous peoples and other cultural communities.
3. SUARA shall actively participate in and update on Ecological concerns.
4. SUARA shall be gender-fair and gender-sensitive organization.
5. SUARA shall be a democratic organization.
6. SUARA shall be pro-people.
7. SUARA shall work for humanism and we are citizens of the world.

Who are we? We are SUARA!

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Photo is courtesy of L. Bautista's book Desaparesidos.