Sessions
Finding My Voice Through Advocating for the SDGs at the Youth Summit
Thomas Liu
Langley High School, McLean, VA
Biography of Huan-Cheng (Thomas) Liu September, 2017 Huan-Cheng (Thomas) Liu is a fourth year immigrant and a Senior at Langley High School, in McLean, Virginia. Working to balance his high school life and service to his community, Thomas takes on a rigorous course load, including courses such as AP US History and AP Macro &...Read Full Bio
Thomas Liu
Biography of Huan-Cheng (Thomas) Liu
September, 2017
Huan-Cheng (Thomas) Liu is a fourth year immigrant and a Senior at Langley High School, in McLean, Virginia. Working to balance his high school life and service to his community, Thomas takes on a rigorous course load, including courses such as AP US History and AP Macro & Microeconomics. At the same time, he is an active member of Langley’s nationally ranked Model UN Club, receiving the highest honors from various universities. After school, Thomas competes with the Langley Crew team as its coxswain for regional, statewide and national races.
Thomas combines his role as a student and his motivation to serve by representing his school wide peers at the Student Advisory Council, working hand in hand with the Superintendent of Fairfax County Public Schools and county stakeholders on issues such as mental health, school environment, and student wellness. In this capacity, Thomas represents over 180,000 students.
Thomas’s community commitments include leadership positions with the Formosa Association of Student Cultural Ambassadors (FASCA) DC Chapter, the Youth Collaboration on Foreign Affairs (YCoFA), and the United Nations Association of the National Capital Area (UNA-NCA). While serving in these positions, Thomas uses innovative approaches to help solve problems that others would regard as unsolvable.
As the Past President of FASCA DC, Thomas was instrumental in creating an outreach plan to connect FASCA DC with the local community, doubling the participation rate of its members and creating a partnership with the DC government. Likewise, he introduced FASCA DC to numerous statewide leaders, resulting in the organization receiving bipartisan recognition.
As the Senior Advisor of YCoFA, Thomas serves on the Executive Team and supervises regional policy teams by providing in-depth and accurate analysis on current international issues.
Since 2016, Thomas has been heavily involved in UNA-NCA, which focuses on advocating and promoting the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in the Greater DC area. Thomas led the efforts to introduce the SDGs to the United States Congress, hosted an event titled “Congress & SDGs” with Rep. Don Beyer (VA-08) on August 8th, 2017.
Thomas was selected as 1 of the 50 Virginian youths to attend the Sorensen Institute for Political Leadership’s High School Leaders Program (HSLP) at the University of Virginia to be trained as a bipartisan youth leader. Thomas was selected by his peers as Class President.
Moving forward, Thomas aspires to study international relations with a concentration on the global economy and global development. Ultimately, Thomas dreams of serving the United States in the Diplomatic Corps as a Foreign Service Officer.
Session Description
I will be sharing my journey of how I started here in the US as a shy immigrant and how I became an outspoken advocate for the SDGs.
All of this began after my experience attending and speaking at the 2013 iEARN Youth Summit in Qatar!
As a recent high school graduate and an incoming freshman of the College of William & Mary, I hope that all of you will join me as I share my story on how I found my confidence, my capability, and my voice.
What will youth learn and be able to do at the end of the session?
I hope to let all youth members attending this summit understand that everyone has a unique voice. When I gave a presentation at iEARN Taiwan as a middle school student while attending my first iEARN Youth Summit in Qatar in 2013, I felt empowered. That allowed my confidence to grow before moving to America in the following year. I believe that the main objective of this session is to empower those to not only share their own story but also to become an advocate for whatever they believe in. As someone who has a strong passion for realizing the SDGs, I found my voice by advocating for the SDGs here in the greater Washington D.C. area. I hope that all participants of the session can learn the basics of event planning, gain the tools necessary for becoming an advocate, and understand how to find their own voice amidst the noise of our modern world.
I hope to share my story and my experiences to help other passionate attendees at this wonderful youth summit. In addition, I hope that during the second half of the session attendees can join in and use their unharnessed skills by sharing their experiences, finding their voices, and engaging in fruitful discussions.
Additional Session Information
As the only high school member of the United Nations Association of the National Capital Area (UNA-NCA), I have been sitting on the UNA-NCA Sustainable Development Committee where I propose and lead high-profile events on educating and advocating on behalf of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) here in the DC area. To me, achieving sustainability is all about educating the public on the progress and continuing challenges of implementation of the SDGs both locally and internationally.
On 8/8/2017, I led the efforts to introduce the concept of the SDGs, with a focus on #Goal13, to Congress and its staffers through hosting a full house event “Congress & SDG’s” by inviting Congressman Don Beyer (VA-08) to be the first member of Congress to commit the Sustainable Development Goals. This event was covered on C-SPAN http://bit.ly/ThomasLiuOpeningRemarks. On 9/25/2017, I was honored to be at Georgetown University delivering the opening remarks on behalf of the UNA-NCA Sustainable Development Committee in DC’s premier conference celebrating the second anniversary of the adoption of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. At the event, The UN SDGs: Diplomatic Perspectives, I highlighted the importance of informing the public on “where are we now” in terms of SDGs action. I also had the great honor to introduce Mr. Tony Pipa who served as the Special Coordinator for the Post-2015 Development Agenda under the Obama Administration.