YAN Sri Lanka Celebrates One Year Anniversary
Youth Action Network (YAN) Sri Lanka is the youth wing of Movendi International member organization, ADIC Sri Lanka. YAN turned one year on June 10, 2020 – and celebrated the achievement with numerous festivities and activities.
YAN Sri Lanka is a youth-led network for young people, by young people, to promote development of youth through, alcohol, tobacco and other drug prevention.
YAN is a multi-cultural, multi-lingual youth network. The young YAN leaders work with youth at the grassroots level towards alcohol, tobacco and other drug prevention through activism in various fields such as the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), Non-Communicable Disease (NCD) prevention, democracy, human rights, and gender equality. They also work towards environmental protection and reconciliation.
To celebrate the one year anniversary of YAN, the youth team conducted a series of activities. They had a small scale celebration at the ADIC office in Colombo, with young volunteers of the network from around the country joining through video conference due to COVID-19 physical distancing measures. The YAN Sri Lanka official website was launched during this celebration.
A web radio series was conducted from June 9 to 11, with guest discussions on alcohol, tobacco and other drug harm on youth and how to overcome this harm as well as other youth specific challenges in the country.
The YAN Sri Lanka official song was also launched during the web radio broadcast series. The team also organized a blood donation camp in the Apeksha Cancer Hospital in Maharagama.
A youth movement to reckon with
Within just one year the YAN team has blossomed into a truly powerful youth voice in the country. YAN has conducted many campaigns to reach their specific goals across the year, such as:
- alcohol, tobacco and drug prevention trainings and awareness programs,
- leadership training programs,
- prevention programs for schools,
- environmental protection programs such as tree planting and beach cleanups, as well as
- women and children’s rights protection programs and many other activities across the year.
During the COVID-19 time period the team conducted social media campaigning specifically for World No Tobacco Day 2020 on May 31, 2020. This campaign included a short video competition, quiz competition, a dedicated webinar and a YouTube video series featuring experts of different fields and youth exposing how the tobacco industry manipulates youth and how to take action against these manipulations.
Movendi International cheers on the young activists from YAN Sri Lanka to achieve the best in their journey.
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