Youth Coalition’s New Leader Marks Group’s Busy First Year

By Susan Yoshihara, Ph.D. | 2011

NEW YORK, November 25 (C-FAM) “We live in a culture that has forgotten its humanity and what it is for. And so people are tired,” Timothy Herrmann told 500 youth gathered in Los Angeles recently. “This is an opportunity to show them why we continue to thrive, why we continue to build and live lives that are attractive. This is how a culture is converted and I believe this is what makes us relevant internationally.”

Herrmann took charge as director of the International Youth Coalition (IYc) in September, an organization founded just over a year ago but already boasting an impressive list of accomplishments. Herrmann, an American, is 25 and has spent the last 5 years living, working, and studying abroad.  He received his masters in international relations from the Catholic University in Milan, and spent last year finishing his research and teaching in Medellin, Colombia on a Fulbright grant. He speaks Italian and Spanish fluently. Besides running IYc, Herrmann also serves as C-FAM’s chief UN Representative (C-FAM is the publisher of the Friday Fax).

What made him pro-life? “I love my life and constantly marvel at my existence,” Herrmann says. “What we fight for at the UN is first and foremost something reasonable, verified in experience.”

Herrmann is not one to shy away from conflict. He began working in the pro-life field while studying political science at the University of California at Berkeley, a notoriously liberal campus, where he was president of the pro-life club for two years. He worked with the founder of the Walk for Life West Coast when it began in 2005. “Our students were on the front line,” he recalls.

His experience at Berkeley convinced him that his generation is the heart of the abortion fight: “We see daily what the culture of the death means in practice and we want something better.”

Herrmann’s office is just steps from the UN, a necessity since IYc’s mission is to counter “the individualistic rights-based youth agenda that dominates the international scene.”  The burgeoning organization was founded by C-FAM in 2010 at a chaotic conference in Leon, Mexico pulled together by the UN Population Fund (UNFPA) and the government of Mexico as a way to garner political and financial support for sexual rights programs for “youth” from 10 to 24 years of age.

A controversial NGO statement emerged from the meeting calling for “universal access to confidential, youth‐friendly sexual and reproductive health services, including access to evidence‐based comprehensive sexuality education, in formal and non‐formal settings.”

In response, IYc generated 100,000 signatures for the “Youth Statement to the UN and World” which emphasizes parents and the family, evolving capacities of the child, complementarity of men and women, and protection of children from exploitation. The pro-life Youth Statement was read into the record of the UN General Assembly by a delegate from the Holy See during last summer’s UN High Level Meeting on Youth.

During that meeting, IYc organized Twitter skirmishes, press conferences, a special Mass with the Papal Nuncio to the UN, a candlelight vigil, a star-studded panel of speakers, and even a rock concert. IYc students were so vocal during the meeting that one UN official said pro-lifers seemed to be “everywhere.”

What lies ahead? Herrmann says there is plenty of work to do. It will be easy to find out what that is since his New York team and IYc members around the world post regularly on its very popular Facebook page.

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