Youth Participation in Global Development: A Lesson Learned from Local Volunteering in Semarang

Abstract

The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), which encourage engagement from a wide range of actors, represent the global framework's development path. However, the role of youth is rarely discussed, despite the fact that young people in Indonesia are in a strategic position to help attain the SDGs owing to the country's demographic advantage. This article seeks to explain the participation of young people in local volunteering in Semarang, Central Java, Indonesia to support the achievement of global goals by using Cosmopolitanism as a theoretical framework. The research methodology in this article is qualitative, with data generated from primary data through surveys with youth volunteers in social projects as well as secondary data from policy briefs, websites and articles. The findings of this study demonstrate that young people's participation in achieving global development goals at the local level is based on their awareness that they are a part of the global community and have a responsibility to contribute to global goals.