On the Go

Avantika Thakur is the sole Indian participant at the 2010 Commonwealth Youth Leadership Programme

“WE are not just catalysts of change,we are in fact the change,” beams 20-year-old Avantika Thakur,as she packs her bag to leave for Kigali,Rwanda where the 2010 Nkabom Commonwealth Youth Leadership Programme is to be held this year. An international youth project to pioneer peace,Thakur has been selected from among 500 international participants from 28 different nations. “I am the only Indian among the thirty-five participants who have been selected,” says the student of the National Law School of India University,Bangalore,who has done her schooling from Sacred Heart High School and Bhavan Vidyalaya School,Chandigarh. She is a lso a part of Agragamee,an NGO that fights for tribal and indigenous people’s rights in mining-induced displacement areas.

The Nkabom Programme is a flagship project of the Royal Commonwealth Society. As part of the 10-day programme,delegates focus on international understanding,peace building and conflict resolution skills. “Rwanda,which is the Commonwealth’s newest member state and where the average age is 18 years,will be an ideal setting for an initiative that propagates the potential of young people to be agents of peace and development,” she says. Thakur will leave for Rwanda on September 4.