VIJAYAWADA: Youth Assembly, organised in Vijayawada Sunday by VnU, short for ‘Vijayawada needs You’, a youth organisation, had students from over 30 different colleges in the city actively participating in it.
Students expressed their opinion forthrightly on special category status for Andhra Pradesh and reservations, the two much-discussed issues in the state and country today. In two separate sessions of one hour each, students gave their opinions with different viewpoints.
“We duly took note of the opinions expressed by the participants on both the issues and after analysing them and compiling the same in a report form, we will submit it to the policy makers of the state and also to the media so as to make the people know our opinions,” said Naga Sravan Kilaru, one of the founding members of VnU.
Explaining the objective of the Youth Assembly, he said youth can no longer keep away from what is going on in society as they are part of the system and what they say does matter most to society. “Hence, we thought to let them have a platform, where they will come across different viewpoints on certain issues in face-to-face interaction and be the voice and pivots of change in their colleges or organisations,” he said.
The programme had also sessions meant for understanding the needs of the city, priorities for development. In the forenoon session, there was one item called speed dating - in which participants sit in two rows and just has one minute to know each other. Since the time given is so less, the curiosity levels increase about the programme and to know more about the persons participating. It was followed by BJP leader and MLC Somu Veerraju giving his take on the present political system, government and loopholes.
Later, the participants were divided into three groups for ‘one hour CM’ programme. The groups were asked to come out with budget planning for Vijayawada city with a population of 12 lakh and a budget of `600 crore. They were asked to focus on four core issues - education, infrastructure, health and sanitation. One each from these teams explained about their budget and the presentations were put to vote. The principal objective of the programme was to make the participants understand planning that goes into budget making. Most of the presentations focused more on the infrastructure.
Representatives from NGOs like Bridge International, Teach for Change and Next Gen of AP Chamber of Commerce and Industries Federation also gave a brief presentation of their respective organisations and opportunities with them for serving society for making it better.