Two blocks of Lego retrieved from the Beirut blast; the Crested Crane, the national bird of Uganda; the Peepal tree, which grows in Nepal. These are among seven objects selected by seven young people from six continents to be stored in “the Future Vault.”
These objects represent core issues affecting young people today, such as education, climate change, the future of work and political representation of young people.
These young people are now asking political leaders and youngsters everywhere to join them in saving the one most important thing they want to preserve for future generations.
All of the objects will be stored in a digital format (illustrations and descriptions) so that the meanings and messages are resistant to damage and accessible from the first day of the 22nd century.
They seven young people are the UN’s Next Generation Fellows, global leaders nominated by youth movements around the world. They consult with their Generation Z peers to capture concerns about the planet they will inherit and propose innovative solutions, some of which have helped shape major UN global reports.
“Too much is at peril. We need to preserve what is important and meaningful for future generations, so that they are not forgotten by the change that is going to happen in the next decade or so,” explains one of the young leaders,” Valeria Colunga, 21, UN’s Foundation Next Generation Fellow from Mexico, and an activist and podcaster.
So far, the Future Vault also includes among many other things, a replica of a warrior queen’s mask from Benin representing the need to protect women’s rights; St Lucia’s Dou Dou Falls, representing the need to protect our ecosystem; and a ration card from Kenya’s Kakuma refugee camp, representing the need to protect people’s homes.
“Coming from a community so immediately affected by rising sea levels and more intense natural disasters has made me acutely aware of the urgent actions needed to address climate change. My submission of an image of the Dou Dou Falls from my native St Lucia shall therefore represent the need to protect our ecosystem, as this is vital to our survival,” says Jevanic Henry, UN’ Foundation Next Generation Fellow from St Lucia.
The young people hope their time capsule will inspire future generations to build their own futures, but also prompt adults and world leaders to act for the nearly half of the world’s population who are under the age of 30 and for the 10 billion people who are yet to be born this century.
