What would happen if we asked a series of people what words they would use to define today's youth? The number of times words like individualistic or unmotivated would appear would stand out to the detriment of the use of other positive concepts. The resulting image would be the one that often prevails in public debate, because it is by repeating a narrative that it ends up being established as true.Now allow me to combine two ideas: the current perception of young people and the Pygmalion effect — the psychological phenomenon in which one person's expectations of another directly influence their behavior and outcomes — widely studied in the educational field. It is easy for young people to also end up believing it, not just certain adults who defend these ideas and who look at them with eyes full of prejudice. How can we afford to validate such a reductionist view of youth? We have too many open fronts to not trust young people and the skills and abilities they have to contribute to improving the society in which we live. There is a real need for young people to be involved to respond to current emergency situations. One of the most obvious, especially this summer, is the climate emergency and the urgency of a change in current lifestyles. And yet, young people are often turned away. Are we not aware of the large volume of young people committed to social movements and the values and ideals that lead them to participate in these spaces?In the case of the youth groups of the Pere Tarrés Foundation Movement, and also of the scout groups, thousands of young people dedicate their time entirely voluntarily to educating and accompanying children. And, of these thousands, there are a good number who invest their work holidays in the summer colonies, camps, or routes of the youth group. They do so because they firmly believe in the impact that the youth group leaves and they assume a commitment. We often repeat that leisure education has been and is a school for citizenship. We are referring to all the learning that children, adolescents and young people take away from the experience of living this opportunity. The monitors become role models for those they accompany. They transmit to children the importance of dedicating themselves to the transformation of their environment from everyday life, of becoming critical people open to diversity, and of developing leadership, conflict resolution or organizational skills, thus training new generations of young people with a transformative vision of society. Faced with this reality of committed young people and current global crises, we must find ways to demonstrate that, as a society, we trust our young people and recognize their contribution. Let's think about it now that we have just celebrated, on the 12th, International Youth Day. It will be by offering spaces to lead, make mistakes, learn, and care for others that we will be able to show a confidence in young people that will allow us to awaken and cultivate the commitment we speak of, and, in this way, we will be able to become a more cohesive, fairer, and more participatory society.

Early in the morning. There are no seats, except for a passenger who occupies the adjacent seat with their backpack. Many travelers are standing. Public transport users have surely experienced this scene more than once. A situation, however, that can generate two responses. In one scenario, the passenger removes their backpack and makes space to sit. The implicit implication of this action is that the space is shared and the group is more important than personal comfort. An action that conveys complicity for the journey (and the suffering of delays), understood as an act of collective action. However, there is also another scenario: the passenger does not remove their backpack, while looking away to the window or at their mobile, trying not to be addressed. "This is my space until someone claims it." Many will not do so to avoid confrontation.

This is an old dilemma that has endured through many historical vicissitudes, in which the excess of one of the two poles of the equation has generated problems of coexistence. Although digitalization generated a certain resurgence of the spirit and meaning of cooperation and sharing (as expressed in the case of Wikipedia), the truth is that the hegemony of competitive logic, the essence of the capitalist economy, is very evident, and with the arrival of Trump and his followers, it has become overwhelming. In our country, in recent months, and as a result of the debate unleashed by BBVA's attempts to take over Banc Sabadell, the word and the concept competence They have reached levels of a totalizing paradigm. It's not normal for banks to talk to each other through all kinds of media, and for the debate/dialogue about their future to fill, through advertisements, newspaper pages or many minutes of television time. The issue, obviously, doesn't only affect the shareholders of both banking entities, but I don't know if the scope it has ended up having was imaginable.