David Miliband speaks to Pakistani youth

	David Miliband speaks to Pakistani youth as part of ongoing British Council Active Citizens Programme

“The main challenges of my generation was to avoid some terrible fashion… those very large flared trousers; a truly contagious disease back then!” said David Miliband, Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, amid much laughter to a group of Pakistani youth in a radio programme being aired live to millions of listeners from Lahore in Pakistan. The British Council staff moderated the event, and in addition to an audience of 25 in the discussion room Pakistani Pop Star Abrar-ul-Haque and David Miliband were part of the proceedings.

The conversation was part of the British Council’s ongoing Active Citizens programme creating engaged youth in Pakistan. The Active Citizens programme in Pakistan has already created successful District Youth Assemblies across the country. Radio One FM91 was contacted as a media partner and Pakistan’s first remote live radio broadcast was created from a third party location. Radio One FM91 did an impressive job in transmitting the proceedings and lived up to its reputation as the premier youth radio station of the country.

Active Citizens Pakistan is in the midst of creating a landmark report on the youth to feed into youth policy, and has done it through a mix of traditional methodology and innovative open source compilation. After AC Nielson conducted research in attitudinal issues of Pakistani youth, commissioned research by the British Council was used to give the first draft of The Next Generation Report context. Now, youth across the country are writing up recommendations via the web, SMS and paper responses that will be collated by experts into a truly landmark national document to feed into sustainable policy for this nation with a teeming young population.
At the event under discussion was the multiethnic nature of Pakistan, and the fissures within. Religion came up, choices between authoritarian government verses weak democracy, class differences and how to combat passivity through policy.

Questions for David Miliband by SMS included one from a listener who wanted to know how the UK would help in educating Pakistan, and others clarifying misunderstandings between the two nations. During the programme one participant at the event, Hira, said, “I wish everyone could have the chance I did today, to have my voice heard and to have it matter”.

The Next Generation Report