Advocacy Training Program

As a part of the wider GISEAS project, IMCS Pax Romana has designed the “Asia Pacific Advocacy Training Programme”. The programme has been designed after much deliberation about the social, political, economic and cultural contexts and also the current realities of the tertiary students’ community during the pandemic. This programme is expected to be an online Training for the youth where participating Student leaders will be given the capacity to respond the socio political economic cultural and religious concerns through advocacy with the hope that they would be the advocates and trainers for their own student communities and the marginalized communities.

Pax Romana in Advocacy

Following the global vision of the movement, since the foundation in 1921, Pax Romana has been active in advocacy in National and International levels in religious as well as secular platforms. 

 

 

From the beginning Pax Romana worked closely with others. Because many of the goals of Pax Romana were similar to that of the “League of Nations”, Pax Romana was invited to participate in a special way and was able to give input to meetings of the League. In 1927, Pax Romana and the organization of Catholic women, invited the presidents of the major International Catholic (lay) organizations working at the League together to discuss common issues. At this meeting, the Conference of (Presidents) International Catholic Organizations (ICO) was created.

In 1949, Pax Romana (ICMICA & IMCS) was one of the first Non-Government Organizations (NGOs) granted Special Consultative status with the United Nations Economic and Social Council. Since then Pax Romana has played a key role in the United Nations and UNESCO taking leadership roles in areas of: Human Rights, Conscientious objection, Social development, sustainable development, youth, education, religious freedom, women’s rights and disarmament.

 

In the recent decades IMCS Pax Romana United Nation’s advocacy team has been the responsible arm of the organization for the Global advocacy efforts. IMCS Pax Romana has been an active partner and contributor to the UN processes through the United Nations Major Group for Children and Youth (UN MGCY) which is the UN General Assembly mandated official, formal and self-organized space for Children and Youth to contribute to and engage in certain intergovernmental and allied policy processes at United Nations which was established in 1992.

 IMCS together with other international youth led organizations were instrumental to establish the International Coordination Meeting of Youth Organizations (ICMYO) in 2004 which is an international network for the World’s largest youth movements and regional youth platforms. On behalf of the ICMYO, IMCS Pax Romana served on the International Youth Task Force that coordinated the 2014 World Conference on Youth (WYC) in Colombo, Sri Lanka as a main organizing partner and WCY policy outcomes were presented to the 2014 UN General Assembly. 

Objectives of the Advocacy Training Programme

Pax Romana has been an inspiration and a training ground for many civil society and political leaders for decades. The unique formation opportunities through capacity building programmes and direct participation in policy making as well as solidarity actions have been the methodology of the movement for forming the young leaders all around the world. Through the Advocacy Training Program, IMCS Pax Romana expects to achieve the following objectives.

  1. Enhancing the knowledge in advocacy.
  2. Reaching out to youth and student leaders representing diverse backgrounds from all the parts of the Asia Pacific.
  3. Creating a common training programme and materials which can be reused in the Local, national, and regional levels for the advocacy trainings.
  4. Contributing to create an advocacy manual.
  5. Building Local, national, and regional advocacy teams which will be connected to the IMCS Pax Romana advocacy team.
  6. Providing Regional and international advocacy engagement opportunities to the youth leaders who successfully finish the training programme.