In partnership with ANCEFA, TakingITGlobal is organizing the first MDG West Africa Open Forum, to be held on June 16, 2005.The Forum is convened as part of a regional strategy to engage young people in West Africa be more involved in the Millennium Campaign. The meeting, coinciding with the International Celebration of African Child Day will be hosted in Dakar Senegal, by the Senegalese National Youth Council.

The Open Forum will also see the official launch of the MDG West Africa Youth Caucus, in presence of the Senegalese Youth Minister along with the MC Regional Coordinator and the MC regional Youth Editor.

Все, кто желает реально помочь обкатать проект Национальной Доктрины Молодежной Политики в Украине - айда на наше обсуждалово!
"MDGs & Youth in the Ukraine - Молодіжна політика і Цілі Тисячоліття в Україні" адрес http://russia.takingitglobal.org/discuss/russia

В последнем апдейте помещен линк к проекту этой самой доктрины. Ну и пусть на украинском... читаем, критикуем, предлагаем альтернативы!
И конечно для этого не нужно жить в Украине :)

Recently some of my friends and I visited an organisation called ACCEPT. It takes care of AIDS patients and dispatches advice on how to help prevent the disease in India.
We spent a day at the organisation. Some of us played with HIV + children who are mostly the children of AIDS patients. Most children born HIV+, donot have a lifespan that exceeds 10 years.
After we had spent enough time with the children, we were educated on the disease. We learnt that because of the lack of education, many suffer from the disease. Most of the victims do not realise they are infected until they reach the last stages.
Their world comes crashing down as once they are labelled as AIDS patients, their own families disown them and add to their emotional torture.
Since they are poor, they cannot afford the expensive treatment which will help increase their life span even by 30 years !
Victims of AIDS in India are discriminated by their family members and loved ones, similar to the caste discrimination which is still evident in many places. They become outcasts.
People don't realise that people with AIDS are only human and they too have emotions just as we do. They fail to recognise their emotional, physical and mental needs.
The bottom line is we need to be educated extensively on the subject and the education must be imparted as early as possible, even to children, afterall, children are the future of our planet.

1st step, you get in touch with a young professional camera man or a journalist with no money but with a determination to shoot a ground-breaking documentary
2nd step, you contact an organization working on MDGs on large scale able to fund a video, and willing to tell an inspiring story about its activities to a broader audience
3rd, you organize a meeting for our heroes.

That's it: the young pro will get some money for doing sth that will encourage thousands to act for the good of mankind.

How cooooooool!

A friend of mine is now a project coordinator with “Global youth partnership initiative in Ukraine” of the United Nations Population Fund!

Can you imagine, Guys! this is just another proof to the old saying that "one who seeks will find"

A bit more about UNPF -

"....GYP projects were successfully realized in Egypt, Kenya, Nairobi, Dominican Republic and in many other countries. Because of terrible situation with HIV/AIDS spread in CIS and mainly Ukraine (we hold the first place among countries of the whole Europe and even CIS by the widespread of this deadly disease, around 1 % !!! of Ukrainian population is infected etc.) it was decided to implement this project in Ukraine this year.



The main goal of it is to change brains of governmental and regional officials – when they draft and implement policies in the field of HIV/AIDS prevention a voice of youth, mainly students, is to be heard.

Secondly, it is directed to create an action plan on HIV/AIDS prevention developed by students and NGOs working in this field and to present this plan to officials.



Main partners of the project are Ministry of Health, Ministry of Education and Science, Ministry of Youth and Family, Center for social services for youth, State social service, maybe Kyiv municipal administration (I’m working on it).



Main activities are situation assessment in Ukraine, workshops for students, NGOs, web site development, conferences with gov. officials, research and reports presentation to media, press conferences etc".


With that said, can you think of a more coherent partner for this project than Takingitglobal?

I think this is a great challenge and an opportunity!

Good luck to you all!

MDGs are worth every exciting moment that Millennium Campaign gives us!

Warm regards,
Oleksiy!