By Perla Michelle Rosales Sandoval 

GOYN CDMX Youth Advisory Group

“I was not born to be still:

I was born to walk barefoot on the earth and leave a mark”

—Sara Curruchich

In Mexico, there are more than 30 million young people between the ages of 15 and 29. All of us have hearts full of dreams and our feet firmly planted in a country that challenges us every day, where finding decent work, accessing quality healthcare, continuing our studies, or even starting a business without fear are privileges.

We've all been judged beforehand by saying we're a "lost" or "glass" generation, but we couldn't be further from that, as we are a generation that organizes, creates, cares, and resists. As a community, we weave networks to confront precariousness with our own solutions. We are full of knowledge born of boredom, exhaustion, and hope.

Employment: Working without having to survive

Fifteen million young Mexicans work informal jobs, meaning they lack contracts, insurance, or adequate hours to study or perform care work. Approximately 70% of young people lack access to social security. For many young people, working means long, poorly paid hours with no security guarantees.

Even amid these adverse realities, we young people continue to create solutions, hold labor rights workshops, create youth cooperatives, community enterprises, and vocational workshops, and share our knowledge.

We're not looking for someone to save us. We're creating our own networks, our own jobs, and taking care of our territories.

Health: From Abandonment to Self-Care

Getting sick in Mexico is a privilege. Health centers and clinics are inaccessible, far away, or empty, and mental health services such as psychologists and psychiatrists are scarce or very expensive. The system, once again, seems designed to ignore us; anxiety, depression, and stress plague us every day, and we continue to suffer without a hearing, without support, or without dignified care.

To achieve this, we organized, talked about mental health, and broke down taboos. We developed peer-to-peer workshops, support circles, and listening groups. We accepted each other as vulnerable and understood that sharing our pain also means taking care of ourselves.

We also raise our voices and demand public policies that speak our language. Through spaces like the GOYN CDMX Youth Advisory Group, we ask that importance be placed on self-care, that respect be placed on the idea that self-care should not be an individual luxury, but rather a collective practice, accessible to all.

We young people also care: we care for our younger siblings, our friends, and our planet. This isn't often mentioned, and that's why we're forced to do it without a support network, without backing or recognition, which tires us out and hurts us.

The message is clear: we need a National Care System that includes us, that sees us as subjects of care. Caregiving must cease to be a silent burden.

Education: Learning from life

Being young can also mean dropping out of school; the reasons can be very diverse, from a lack of resources, grueling workdays, or even a system that doesn't represent us. But this doesn't necessarily mean we've stopped learning.

We young people understand that education isn't just found in classrooms; we know it's found in the networks we build, in the streets, in the kitchens, in the neighborhoods, in all the spaces we make our own.

Youth in community learn from each other and their mentors, develop soft skills, and move forward together.

We, the youth communities, want to be heard, to be seen as agents of change in the present. Because, even when the State is absent, we—through collectives, groups, networks, chat rooms, offices, markets, etc.—move forward, weave networks, sustain community, and sow justice.

And this is for you, reading this from somewhere in the world: change is here, and it has always been among young people. Let's walk together, let's unite our knowledge and learn from the challenges we face together. Care is collective, and we don't know how to stay still, and we will leave our mark, we will change the world.