By Elio Villaseñor
Director General of Citizen Initiative for
the Promotion of the Culture of Dialogue, AC

“Youth is not a time of life,
It is a state of mind.”

— Samuel Ullman

Young people who work, care, start businesses, or study have something in common: they are building their future from the present, with responsibility, empathy, and courage.

There are those who get up early to work and support themselves; those who contribute at home, in factories, shops, offices or from their cell phones, showing that youth also puts a face to the daily effort.

There are those who take care of their siblings, their grandparents or people with disabilities, sometimes postponing their own projects out of love and responsibility.

There are those who undertake projects with creativity, turning ideas into solutions and obstacles into opportunities.

And there are those who study despite the precariousness, with the deep desire to transform their reality and that of the country.

They all share the same conviction: the future is not waited for, it is built.

And they do it from their daily lives, with small but firm decisions, with courage, even in an environment that often demands more from them than it offers.

We live in a time where being young is not always synonymous with recognition.

They are often judged from an adult perspective or by market rules, without understanding their diversity, their struggles, and their aspirations.

But young people, far from giving up, seek to forge their own paths: sometimes with support, many other times through their own strength.

They want to be heard not as a homogeneous group, but as people with different stories, with complex dreams and realities, with their own ideas to change their environment.

That is why it is urgent that public policies not be designed only “for” young people, but “from” young people, recognizing their contexts, their profiles and their potential.

It is not about assisting them, but about walking alongside them, accompanying their processes without imposing a single valid path on them.

Recognizing youth also means recognizing their daily struggle to build a dignified life:

- At work,

– At home as caregivers,

– In their projects as entrepreneurs,

– In classrooms and in neighborhoods as students.

Every young person is a story. Every story, a silent force that is transforming this country from the ground up.