Every morning I am woken up by a whistle being blown from outside the hotel and a bunch of guys screaming instructions at each other. Football! They start practising at 2 am! Infact, they never leave that football pitch! Oh yes, this is Brazil!

Day 2 of the second ever peer facilitation programme has seen us do a variety of interactive training sessions especially voice coaching which undoubtedly is one of the most important tools in the communication method for the magic to happen effectively. Yes, you guessed it – a football has been involved several times! How is our little secret! This is Brazil! You could say that we are now getting down and dirty in the nitty gritty of the training with lead facilitator extraordinaire John Martin having to massage a few shoulders and necks to get those voices well projected!

The programme and content are all set for the very soon kick off day of the summit and we have had an introductory brainstorm about what will be happening thorough out the days and especially the how to part in channelling our energies towards a well handled summit. We are in agreement that the peer facilitation programme is there so as to keep the participants well connected with each other regardless of their backgrounds in motivating partnerships amongst them. The peers will also serve to keep the wider Global Changemakers sphere up to speed as to how all participants will be engaging each other in the creation of projects and activism that will lift their profiles and portfolios to another level.

From a roller coaster of energisers to team building exercises, we are all getting into grips with the whole idea of facilitating an event that will have 60 people into one room for an intense 7 day learning and sharing amongst the best youth of the Latin America, Caribbean and a portion from the rest of the world. We have indeed been flexing almost every muscle to ensure that we are able to deliver a programme that will be just and even more inspiring and welcoming to the new Changemakers.

Cheers from Brazil
Jermain Ndhlovu, Global Changemaker Zimbabwe

 

Vietnam Youth Forum 2010 (July 18 – 22, 2010, Hanoi, Vietnam)- UYEN  NGUYEN

After being a participant to Vietnam Youth Forum 2009 (VYF 2009) last year, I was chosen to be a member of the VYF 2010’s organizing committee. Had been working on it for 3 months before I joined in the Global Changemakers family through Global Youth Summit 2009, the organizing crew and I still had no idea how we were going to make the event different from the previous one.

But coming back from GYS 2009, I had a fresh, new approach to VYF 2010: the future participants to VYF 2010 would have the chance to feel how I felt and to learn what I learnt during GYS 2009, because experiences from GYS was the best that any activist in the world could ever have. So, besides adapting the core format of VYF - each day of the Forum revolves around one specific area in the following four: Vietnamese culture, education, environment and economy, VYF 2010 consists of activities that could provide its participants with crucial project building skills, and most importantly, empowers them to develop their own community projects during and after the Forum. While VYF 2009 emphasized on personal awareness and action changes, VYF 2010 expands its impact to the community by not only changing one particular person but also raising his/her commit to spread the changes to the community through their projects.

Inspired by my GYS experiences, VYF 2010 revolved around the theme of “Change”. Accordingly, the slogan for the forum was set to be: “Youth – Seeds of Changes”. By July 1st, 28 most outstanding applicants were chosen to participate in VYF 2010 from over 200 applications from all over Vietnam through application screenings and interviews. The chosen ones, if not by their track records, were chosen by their strong potential portrayed on their application form and performance during interview. One of the side stories: we organizing committee all took at look at our last year’s application forms and scored ourselves to see if we would be qualified for being this year’s participants – the results should be kept in secret, though.

VYF 2010 saw a huge difference from the previous two VYF, which were day events (participants arrived at the venue in the morning and left in the afternoon) taking place in central Hanoi, we took this year’s participants off the city centre to a suburb area called Dai Lai; participants shared their 5 days and 4 nights of the Forum together in a resort owned by Vietnamese Ministry of Culture and Information originally used for artists to relax and find their inspirations for art works! Now I couldn’t be more thankful to Global Changemakers, you guys not only inspired me to design the event but also granted me the money to provide the participants with ‘foods and shelter’!

While I and other three members of the organizing committee travelled to Dai Lai on July 17th to do set-up works and all, the rest of the committee and the participants arrived at Dai Lai in the morning of July 18th – all was unaware of the difficulties about to come and the great changes we were about to experience and to make.

The Forum followed the projected agenda quite well – all mistiming were fixed and bent to fit in. As planned, the 5 days of forum were named according to the theme of the days: Opening & Culture Day, Education Day, Environmental Day, Economy Day and Action Day. Because of the great deal of more available time than the last two VYF, we could provide the participants with more activities and networking. Besides the day activities that include roundtable and group discussions, debates and guest-speakers’ lectures, we provided activities similar to GYS Sketch and Skills Marketplace after dinners. We also took participants to a traditional pottery village for participants to learn about the traditional culture and experience a way of informal education (as it was the link between Culture Day and Education Day).

During the Forum, 5 group projects by participants were built and all was highly committed to realize their projects namely:
• Tay Nguyen Youth Forum 2011
• Improving public WC and proper education on using WC for elementary students
• TEDxVietnam
• Improving education quality at School for homeless children 19-5, Hanoi
• Classes of traditional art and culture for children

There is this coincidence during VYF 2010: our opening and ending were held as tropical storms approaching the place. While the storms caused us some worries (but fortunately, it didn’t cause us any troubles), we organizing committee are hopeful that the changes that we inspired in the participants and the people that we reached would evolve into a storm of positive changes to the community.

Please look forward to news from the Vietnam Youth Projects!

Now I’ve got some packing to do and some stories to prepare for the LAYS in Rio!

 

 

 

 

 

Vietnam Youth Forum 2010 (July 18 – 22, 2010, Hanoi, Vietnam)- UYEN  NGUYEN

After being a participant to Vietnam Youth Forum 2009 (VYF 2009) last year, I was chosen to be a member of the VYF 2010’s organizing committee. Had been working on it for 3 months before I joined in the Global Changemakers family through Global Youth Summit 2009, the organizing crew and I still had no idea how we were going to make the event different from the previous one.

But coming back from GYS 2009, I had a fresh, new approach to VYF 2010: the future participants to VYF 2010 would have the chance to feel how I felt and to learn what I learnt during GYS 2009, because experiences from GYS was the best that any activist in the world could ever have. So, besides adapting the core format of VYF - each day of the Forum revolves around one specific area in the following four: Vietnamese culture, education, environment and economy, VYF 2010 consists of activities that could provide its participants with crucial project building skills, and most importantly, empowers them to develop their own community projects during and after the Forum. While VYF 2009 emphasized on personal awareness and action changes, VYF 2010 expands its impact to the community by not only changing one particular person but also raising his/her commit to spread the changes to the community through their projects.

Inspired by my GYS experiences, VYF 2010 revolved around the theme of “Change”. Accordingly, the slogan for the forum was set to be: “Youth – Seeds of Changes”. By July 1st, 28 most outstanding applicants were chosen to participate in VYF 2010 from over 200 applications from all over Vietnam through application screenings and interviews. The chosen ones, if not by their track records, were chosen by their strong potential portrayed on their application form and performance during interview. One of the side stories: we organizing committee all took at look at our last year’s application forms and scored ourselves to see if we would be qualified for being this year’s participants – the results should be kept in secret, though.

VYF 2010 saw a huge difference from the previous two VYF, which were day events (participants arrived at the venue in the morning and left in the afternoon) taking place in central Hanoi, we took this year’s participants off the city centre to a suburb area called Dai Lai; participants shared their 5 days and 4 nights of the Forum together in a resort owned by Vietnamese Ministry of Culture and Information originally used for artists to relax and find their inspirations for art works! Now I couldn’t be more thankful to Global Changemakers, you guys not only inspired me to design the event but also granted me the money to provide the participants with ‘foods and shelter’!

While I and other three members of the organizing committee travelled to Dai Lai on July 17th to do set-up works and all, the rest of the committee and the participants arrived at Dai Lai in the morning of July 18th – all was unaware of the difficulties about to come and the great changes we were about to experience and to make.

The Forum followed the projected agenda quite well – all mistiming were fixed and bent to fit in. As planned, the 5 days of forum were named according to the theme of the days: Opening & Culture Day, Education Day, Environmental Day, Economy Day and Action Day. Because of the great deal of more available time than the last two VYF, we could provide the participants with more activities and networking. Besides the day activities that include roundtable and group discussions, debates and guest-speakers’ lectures, we provided activities similar to GYS Sketch and Skills Marketplace after dinners. We also took participants to a traditional pottery village for participants to learn about the traditional culture and experience a way of informal education (as it was the link between Culture Day and Education Day).

During the Forum, 5 group projects by participants were built and all was highly committed to realize their projects namely:
• Tay Nguyen Youth Forum 2011
• Improving public WC and proper education on using WC for elementary students
• TEDxVietnam
• Improving education quality at School for homeless children 19-5, Hanoi
• Classes of traditional art and culture for children

There is this coincidence during VYF 2010: our opening and ending were held as tropical storms approaching the place. While the storms caused us some worries (but fortunately, it didn’t cause us any troubles), we organizing committee are hopeful that the changes that we inspired in the participants and the people that we reached would evolve into a storm of positive changes to the community.

Please look forward to news from the Vietnam Youth Projects!

Now I’ve got some packing to do and some stories to prepare for the LAYS in Rio!

 

 

 

 

 

LACYS - Behind the  scenes

It seems time is moving faster towards the Latin America and Carribean Youth Summit. In less than a week, 60 young leaders from 25 countries will be coming together to learn how to create change through their in-country or regional projects. As usual at this point, the programme is finalised, the e-tickets and hotel accomodation are booked and the British Council team is already in the hosting country. Modestly, Brazil could not be a better place to receive such enthusiastic people as well as to host a big event with the LACYS framework. Looking at the other side of the coin we still have many preparations to make and the one which is at the spotlight right now is the peer facilitator training which some old Global Changemakers have been immersed in for 3 days.

After 3, 12, 24 or even 28 hours of intense flight, Samar (Tunisia), Uyen (Vietnam), David (Paraguay), Italo and Luis (Brazil), Mariel (Mexico), Laura (Colombia), Jermain (Zimbabwe), Heather (UK) and Nimesh (Nepal) have been trained by John Martin plus Louise Cowper and Matt Kimmich to add to the LACYS the real experiences of being a Global Changemaker, but also to help ensure the objectives of the Summit will be reached and particularly followed by every single participant. Yesterday, all of them had a great time in terms of learning and planning every single detail to make the upcoming event as enjoyable, empowering and unforgettable as possible to all of the new members of the Global Changemakers family.

We are so thrilled and motivated to getting to know the participants that we had to apply our energy in something else after working hard yesterday. So, Luis and me, the Brazilian Morning and Night Guides respectively, took the other facilitators to spend their energies and samba shoes at a great cultural  party at LAPA, in Rio de Janeiro. You do not know when to stop laughing when you are having so much fun with such outstanding companies, and when you have a Colombian, a Paraguayan and a Tunisian dancing samba so tirelessly, especially when they oblige 2 Brazilian guys, who surprisingly have been deprived of the samba talent, teach them how to dance. Whatever! Samar liked dancing samba so much that she decided to run a CAP by teaching underprivileged children in Tunisia to dance samba and she said she will give a little demonstration of her talent to all the participants over the next week.

You can expect so much from this Summit! And be in certain of the fact that we will strive hard to facilitate your understanding even if we come to need to teach you how to dance samba whether it ends up in bringing real change.

The Warmest Brazilian Hugs,
Italo Ribeiro, Brazil Global Changemaker

 

 

 

The UN Chronicle is looking for the names of four outstanding youth from Eastern Europe & Southeast Asia, two fromNorth America, and two from South America, who possess excellent English writing skills to be featured writers in its upcoming youth-centered issue. The issue, which will come out in January/February, will feature only writers who are twenty-four years of age or younger and is meant to be published in correlation to the International Year of Youth.  The UN Chronicle would welcome an article by a young person who is working to make change and who has fresh perspective on global issues and is looking for topic suggestions based on the youth’s geographic area and global interest.. 

If you’re interested email your name, country, contact info, a brief bio and, and specific article topics  you feel would be timely and interesting for the issue to: 

Courtney 
UN Chronicle 
DC1 - 0975A
Department of Public Information
United Nations, New York, NY 10017
[email protected]