-The General Assembly this year will introduce a youth and armed conflict, the deputy of the Office of Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs is working on this.

-Theres a lot of talk about PRSPs and youth involvement. Victor Karunan of UNICEF says that UNICEF is taking the lead on integrating youth participation into PRSP precseses, and the WB is currently collecting case studies and global research on youth employment. They will serve as the first to analyize youth employment all over the world, and keep a web-based database for youth employment. There is a call for examples of youth-led, youth-driven cases for youth employment. One delegate commented, there is a lot of pressure for youth orgs to submit case studies to all different agencies and NGOs, can't there be some coordination of this? Hopefully comprehensive intiatives like this one of the WB and partners will address some of this overlap.

-There is currently more and more emphasis towards having national poverty planning, UNICEF sees this as positive momentum and will work to involve youth in these processes. Juan Felipe Sanchez of the WB youth program agrees the new focuses on PRSP processes can be key to integrating diverse sectors in national planning.

- Quote of the day:
“We failed as youth organizations because we did not hold governments accountable to the World Program of Action for Youth, and governments failed because they did not follow through.”
Joao Salviano, European Youth Forum

During the lunch break I attended the side-event organized by ICMYO (the International Coordination Meeting of Youth Organizations) on “Global and Regional Youth – Experiences with the WPAY”. There were two speakers from UN agencies at the event (a person from the Youth Employment Network of the ILO and a representative of UNICEF). The other people were speakers from the European Youth Forum, the World Organization of the Scout Movement, the International Movement of Catholic Students (Pax Romana) and the World Alliance of YMCAs. Two things that I found interesting at the event and that I would like to share here:
1.) The ILO is sending out a call to all youth organizations this week to submit them case studies of how youth organizations on a local level are addressing the problem of youth unemployment. ILO wants to collect about 20-30 best practices that they will compile in a report. I thought this is a really good opportunity for young people (especially those involved in YES country networks) to highlight and get some recognition for their projects. So if you are working on youth employment, please watch out the ILO/YEN website this week!
2.) The representative from the Scouts was talking about their HIV/AIDS program and I was actually quite impressed by the work they are doing on the ground. One example that I really liked was, that the Scouts are giving out red ribbons, which Scouts can put on their uniforms after successfully completing a training course on HIV/AIDS. The red ribbon also entitles the Scouts who receive it to train other young people themselves afterwards. I think this is a great way of promoting these training/education courses as well as peer-to-education.

[For a more personal and more detailed report about my first day at the WPAY review, please visit my personal TIG blog.

Youth-Development: Linking the Millenium Development Goals to the World Programme of Action for Youth

A presentation on how young people are working to achieve both the MDGs and WPAY

October 5th at
United Nations Headquarters 1.15-2.45 PM
Conference Room B

Moderator:
Pera Wells Deputy Secretary General WFUNA

Speakers:
Emily Freeburg, Chair NGO Committee on Youth
Nancy Kaizilege, Youth Delegate Tanzania
Luis Irigoytia, GYAN National Coordinator Argentina
Frederick Bernas, Youth Delegate United Kingdom
Joya Banerjee, Coordinator GYCA

Organizing Partners:
Global Youth Action Network (GYAN)
Global Youth Coalition HIV/AIDS (GYCA)
Peace Child International
World Federation of United Nations Associations
NGO Committee on Youth (New York)

So I made it to the NGO briefing session with Mr. Joop Theunissen - not to heavy on youth participation at 9am, but we have a promising group! The real meetings started in the coffee shop afterwards. :)

I hope we can get some good reflections and reports on the blog this week! I'll have to take some pictures. Emily