Transcript
The NGO Tongan Youth Leaders nominated their founder Elizabeth Kite for the role. If successful Ms Kite wants to emphasize education for all, to empower under represented communities and to tackle climate change. She says she wants to take her work helping people living with disabilities in Tonga to other Pacific Commonwealth nations.
"I previously have worked with people living with disabilities by teaching braille classes to visually impaired, so access to education for all groups of people is very important to me and I think that's something that the Pacific region can definitely work on."
Ms Kite says there has never been a Tongan representative on the Commonwealth Youth Council.
"That's why it's really important for me to either win this position or have another Pacific Islander sit in this seat. It has to be a Pacific Islander, especially because in 2020 with the re-election time, it will be open to the Pacific region for the chair position."
Ms Kite says the opportunities provided by the Council are not widely known by Pacific youth. Hilda Vukikomoala, from the Pacific Youth Council, agrees.
"Quite a number of youth I know who live here in the capital, Suva, and are tech savvy and involved in social work in their community, did not know that CYC existed when I asked them and the youth workers who did know of CYC existence never had contacted anyone from CYC or for its relevance to the Pacific."
Ms Vukikomoala says she is running for the council because she wants to raise awareness of the opportunities abroad for Pacific youth. She says before embarking on any ambition to build a sustainable future for the Pacific, awareness of the Council is priority.
"On the Commonwealth Youth Council page it states and I quote, the Commonwealth Youth Council is the official representative voice of more than 1.2 billion young people in the Commonwealth. I would argue that CYC has not been the representative voice of us Pacific Island youth and I would like to tackle that issue head on and that is the first step to addressing the youth related problems at the grassroots of the Pacific region."
Miliana Iga is the executive of the Pacific Youth Forum Against Corruption. Ms Iga agrees more knowledge of what the Commonwealth Youth Council can do for Pacific youth is needed.
"Here in the Pacific we've got a lot of young leaders that might be doing work at the grassroots that are thinking they are not recognised, but we need to stomp our mark as the Pacific, we need to have that united front in international platforms such as the Commonwealth."
The third candidate running for the election on 18th April is Australian Tamara Richardson..
