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An Active Profile

Interview with Melanie Poole
photo Melanie on the Pakistan/Tajikistan border

As one way of involving youth in its processes, the United Nations allows for the inclusion of youth delegates in each country's official delegation. Melanie Poole, 25, was one of two Australian youth delegates to the 63rd session of the UN General Assembly in 2008. Since finishing high school, Melanie's interest in community and volunteer work has led to her working with AIDS orphans and refugees in Kenya, young women in Pakistan and indigenous youth in Australia. She is currently finishing her degrees in Law and Arts at the Australian National University.

SGI Quarterly: How did you get involved in the UN youth delegate program?

Melanie Poole: I was involved in a lot of community activities in high school, and afterwards I worked and traveled in developing countries. I never imagined that these experiences would result in me one day addressing the General Assembly, but I have learned that through doing things that feel meaningful, one inevitably seems to land in the right place.

SGIQ: What happens once you've been selected as a delegate, in Australia?

MP: It's a one-year position, with eight weeks at the UN Headquarters in New York. You spend half of the year doing a consultation in Australia, covering every state and territory, in order to build a mandate from which to represent young people. I was able to spend a whole month of my consultation visiting indigenous communities. It was an amazing opportunity to connect with people and hear their stories. I think it's very important to have that emotional experience to complement your intellectual understanding.

SGIQ: What were your first impressions when you arrived at the UN?

MP: The first couple of weeks were simply surreal. I'd be walking down the hallway and bumping shoulders with people like Tony Blair, Ahmadinejad, Bono . . . all sorts of people. There were seminars in small rooms along the hallway constantly, and people like Jeffrey Sachs would be giving talks, and you could go in and have quite a lengthy chat with them afterwards.

Our focus was working on the Third Committee of the General Assembly, which deals with human rights issues. The focus last year was indigenous issues, women's issues and youth issues.

The key opportunities to be a youth advocate at the UN were firstly a seven-minute speech that each country's youth representative makes to the Third Committee of the General Assembly. I did feel some disconnect between all of the information I had collected in Australia and the level to which I could actually communicate any of that. But we were able to get across the main things that young people were concerned about--things like climate change and women's equality and indigenous issues--and also we used the speech to really make the case for youth participation in international decision-making.

But it was a side event that I organized along with the Dutch youth representative that was the most meaningful thing I did over there. My view of why the UN needs young people is that young people can be very honest and candid. There is so much political speak there, and they can cut through some of that and suggest bold ideas. So I got as our keynote speaker a young African-American woman from Harlem, Aja-Monet Bacquie, whom I had met at a women's conference. She is a youth activist for a lot of young people from the housing projects and is also a moving and bold spoken-word poet.

I was quite nervous about how she was going to be received, because the UN is such a formal setting. No one ever claps for anyone, but when she finished speaking the whole room burst into applause.

photo Melanie with young women in Baltistan, Pakistan, in 2007

The UN is its own little world--diplomats rarely have time to step outside of it. So it was very moving to have this young woman come and say, "If you get on the subway and travel for 15 minutes, then these are the lives that you would be coming across," and to talk about what life is like for young African-American people in Harlem in the housing projects.

And because we were having a discussion about the Millennium Development Goals, she was able to say, "That all sounds great, but if you went to the project I lived in and you asked people there what poverty was, they wouldn't talk about any of the things you've mentioned." And then she gave a much broader description of what poverty was, that brought in things like a lack of control over your life, lack of a voice, lack of an ability to participate. She was saying things that were so intuitive, but no one had even thought about them.

I think part of the downside of the UN is that, as much as I have a lot of optimism in its ability to provide a forum for progressive change, I also encountered a lot of cynicism and rigidity and politics there. I think that young people standing up and presenting those candid perspectives can serve to remind people what they're doing there.

SGIQ: What was your impression of the way that the youth delegates are seen and listened to?

MP: The main problem is that we are not very visible. If there were 192 youth representatives, I think that would make a huge difference. Last year we were a group of about 17. People don't know who we are; they just assume that we're interns.

I was also worried that young people in developing countries were not well represented.

SGIQ: There are a lot of young people who want to be involved in making a difference in the world, but who doubt they are able to make a difference.

photo Young Kalasha women with Melanie in Pakistan, 2007

MP: Being involved in community programs gives you a really tangible sense of the difference you can make. For example, when I was in Pakistan in 2007 interviewing young women, I came across so many overwhelmingly inspirational people doing amazing things. They were so isolated and disadvantaged, and yet they made all these incredible things happen. Those stories keep you motivated. Getting out there and connecting with people who are creating change can convince you that you can make a difference. For example, when I met young women who were running girls' schools despite the threat of reprisal from Taliban leaders, I thought to myself, "Well, I really have no excuse--if they can create change under these conditions then surely I, with all the resources and privileges at my disposal, can too!"

I think we all want to create change, people just get disillusioned. I've recently started a position in the political science program at the Australian National University focusing on young people and climate change. Research has found that the assumption that there are particular people in society who will always be disinterested in joining political dialogue, or apathetic about human rights or environmental issues, for example, is actually a myth. Research has revealed a transformation of people's attitudes when they are asked to participate in a forum by people who genuinely want to listen to them.

SGIQ: How did you start having the kinds of experiences you've talked about?

MP: I had decided when I was about eight years old that I was going to Africa as soon as I finished school, and when I was about 16, I started reading about every volunteer group I could find out about.

photo With UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon

I was raised in a single-parent family with a very low income, and I certainly couldn't ask my parents to pay for me to go overseas. It was just through wanting to do it enough that I was willing to work the hours I needed to save up the money.

The other big thing that I have learned over and over again is that if you ask people for help, generally they want to help you. And when you do something that feels meaningful, it really does seem that that leads you to the next thing and the next.

See the following related article by a Thai youth delegate to the United Nations. Learn more about youth delegates at the United Nations and how to become one: www.un.org/esa/socdev/unyin/youthrep.htm

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