Never give up. Everyone wants to help their family, their community, their country. We need to bring out that desire of everyone and transform it into action.” - Ashan Perera.
Words from Ashan Perera the founder of Roads to Rights right after accepting the People Choice award 2018.
The Road to Rights – youth-led organization has added another milestone accomplishment to its resume as it earns the “Peoples’ Choice Award for the year 2018” at the Global Festival of Action for Sustainable Development organized by the UN SDG Action Campaign which recognizes the most outstanding and innovative efforts to inspire actions on the Sustainable Development Goals declared by the United Nations.
The United Nations SDG Action Campaign is a special initiative of the UN Secretary-General, mandated to support the UN system-wide and the Member States on advocacy and public engagement in the SDG implementation. Building on innovative and impactful engagement techniques deployed since 2002, the UN SDG Action Campaign creates awareness about the 2030 Agenda, empowering and inspiring people across the world to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) while generating the political will to make them attainable by 2030.
The Global Festival of Action for Sustainable Development is the world´s most inspiring SDG event to celebrate, empower, and connect the global community driving Action for the Sustainable Development Goals.Organized by the UN SDG Action Campaign with the support of the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development and the German Federal Foreign Office, the Festival brings together the local community taking action to make the Sustainable Development Goals a reality. It will recognize and celebrate the innovators, conveners and breakthrough actors who are transforming lives and generating practical solutions to some of the world’s most intractable problems.
This global event with more than 1000 participant from around the world took place on the 21st of March at Bonn city Germany. Road To Rights was selected Out of 125 countries and competed with 746 applications . And we are pleased to inform our achievement as 2018 people’s choice award winners. As change makers of our generation, we are looking forward to making a difference in our people’s lives while working towards Sustainable Development Goals.
During this event founder and President of the Road to Rights Ashan Perera spoke about the importance of youth taking action towards SDGs and how as the youth-led organization plan to achieve the SDG goals.At the same time, he had the opportunity to express the future initiative of the organization and connect the SDG network for the new ideas and suggestions.His further vision is to build a solid platform with the necessary government authorities to implement SDGs in local sectors.
The core principals of the Road to Rights creating awareness on human rights and combine 2030 agenda of Sustainable development goals ,thus empowering youth and creating a community which shares love and values interpersonal respect, especially respects everyone’s independence.
For the past 9 years, The Road to Rights has launched many successful campaigns island wide such as “Purposeful Play”, “Senses and souls”, iLead, YouthVote, human rights friendly cities, Rock the city, Green girls, etc…The organization has also accomplished many achievements including different awards and the successful completion of many international and national level projects such as the 69th National Human Rights day celebrations, First ever youth independence celebrations in Sri Lanka, etc...The work of the Road to Rights has also opened many national level dialogues and also created inspiration even at the grassroots level.
Ashan Perera, the founder of this organization, began volunteering when he was just 8 years old, and with many obstacles and challenges, today he has been able to not only create a youth- organization to involve and inspire many young individuals in Sri Lanka but has also extended the Road to Rights organization to another 18 countries around the world. He is an individual who has set an example as to how much impact one person can make on the path to create a better world.
