Giving Compass' Take:

• James da Costa reports how youth will be pivotal in pushing the world toward achieving the Sustainable Development Goals. 

• How can older generations help to inspire and mentor youth? What are we doing to encourage the energy and passion of young people involved in nonprofit work?

• Read about why philanthropy must be involved in youth-led social change movements. 

With the start of 2020, we enter a new decade, and the world will watch as the invisible timer counts down the 10 years we have left to achieve the United Nations' Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Branded the "Decade of Action" by the UN, this decade needs to be defined by a significant global increase in financial, operational and group action toward the SDGs. The consequences of failing on this are dire.

The devastating bushfires unfolding before our eyes across Australia are the latest, and arguably one of the most dramatic, wake-up calls to the impact that insufficient action has on making our world more sustainable. The millions of people still living and being born into poverty each day around the world, although no longer as shocking as it once was, are one of our most persistent and insidious warnings that we still have a long way to go to achieve the SDGs.

As the new decade dawns, one group will be pivotal in pushing the world to achieve the SDGs: youth change-makers. UN Secretary-General António Guterres echoed this with his 2019 end-of-year remarks, stating that as we enter 2020 with "uncertainty and insecurity all around," the world’s young people are its "greatest source" of hope.

Read the full article about youth activism and making a change by James da Costa at Forbes.