Youth empowerment advocate Chiranthi Senanayake was recently awarded the prestigious Diana Award, being the only Sri Lankan award winner for 2020.
The Diana Award is presented by the Diana Award Foundation to a group of youth change-makers each year.
The Diana Award was established in 1999 by the British Government who wanted to continue the legacy of Diana, Princess of Wales by establishing a formal way to recognise young people who were going above and beyond the expected in their local communities. The Diana Award strives to give a higher platform to the many young voices that go unheard.
The Diana Award Foundation became an independent charity in 2006, developing into a full-fledged youth movement, launching its own programmes to fight bullying and mentor and empower youth the world over.
The Diana Award is presented to youth from the ages of nine to 25, who have performed outstanding services at the community level across various fields. The Diana Award is judged by a panel of senior youth volunteers and leaders, creating a unique and insightful judging process.
Chiranthi Senanayake was the only winner of the Diana Award for Sri Lanka, being recognised for her work for empowering youth in Sri Lanka both as an individual and through the organisation Hype Sri Lanka, where she serves as Founder and President.
Senanayake is a youth empowerment advocate with a specialist focus on youth empowerment incubation. Senanayake first started volunteering in 2009, when as a student she visited a rehabilitation camp in Mullaitivu to conduct development programmes for former Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) women soldiers. This experience opened Senanayake’s eyes to how the horrors of war and violence can affect the potential of youth in the long term.
Senanayake went to work with the United Nations (UN’s) volunteer arm We Force, as well as One World volunteers, the volunteer wing of the Sri Lanka Model United Nations (SL MUN), eventually being appointed a UN Youth Delegate in 2016 and delivering Sri Lanka’s youth statement at the 3rd General Assembly Session of the UN.
This secondary career of sorts as a youth diplomat led Senanayake to focus on youth empowerment incubation through the formation of Hype Sri Lanka. Youth empowerment incubation attempts to build youth empowerment by streamlining the existing youth development system by focusing on top-level empowerment where apex decision-making processes like youth empowerment policy formulation and youth infra development take place in an effort to create more holistic youth empowerment and development.
Senanayake explained that many governments, including the Sri Lankan Government, take a “bottom-to-top” approach to youth empowerment, conducting development initiatives at the grassroots level with the aim of youth development, making an impact across the board up to decision and policy-making levels. Senanayake found that this approach can sometimes be ineffective and can result in the top levels of youth empowerment and development being neglected.
For example, the Hype Policy Think Tank is a purely volunteer-run initiative that facilitates the youth policy cycle of Sri Lanka, helping involve youth in developing policy on national trainings and helping develop the policies that govern and affect them, as opposed to youth policy being developed by older policy-makers who don’t always understand the specific needs of youth on a national level.
Hype Sri Lanka also looks at unifying youth stakeholder groups through Project Nexus – a database of all of Sri Lanka’s youth organisations. Once youth organisations register with Hype (registering with the Government is a complicated and often discouraging process, as Senanayake explained), Hype divides the organisations into clusters based on the work they do and how they operate.
Project Nexus encourages and builds an environment where youth organisations can network and create partnerships for collaboration. Senanayake feels that youth organisations collaborating on causes and events can affect much more significant and impactful change as opposed to working alone.
The Diana Award recognised Senanayake’s work in the youth development field; her efforts create a mainstream youth empowerment incubation platform and change paradigms for youth empowerment on a national level, working on youth development at both the apex level and the grassroots level.
Through winning the Diana Award, which gives Senanayake access to the Diana Award Foundation’s massive network, Senanayake hopes to drive youth empowerment and development and drive home the importance of volunteering time, skills, and resources to make the lives of someone else or their community better.