This day began with a 'working breakfast' meeting at the Swiss Mission, on the subject of mental health. It was well attended, with many national youth reps coming along to discuss the situation on this issue in their countries and think about ways to improve things. Although this isn't exactly my specialist subject, I was able to contribute what I knew and it was very interesting to learn about the situation in other countries. And free food never goes down badly!

After that there was preparation work to be done with Kristofer and Keeley for our side event, scheduled to take place at 1.15. We had a runthrough of what we were all going to say just to make sure everything would go smoothly in the actual event. We rehearsed it all in the room where it would happen and felt ready once that was done.

I ran into one of the staff members of the UN Youth Programme and he invited me and lots of other youth delegates to a press conference on the launch of the 2005 World Youth Report. But this wasn't the only topic: the UN press officer went through all the day's news and we then had presentations about the report. It was dissappointing to see that most of the journalists' questions were related to other matters, not the youth report, but it was good that young people had a strong presence anyway.

Media at the UN seems to be very entrenched and centralised. Reporters have offices in the main building and there is a large area with all the latest press releases available in different languages. There's also a dedicated radio station which operates on site - several youth reps have been interviewed and hopefully this will be valuable publicity.

The official launch of the report took place shortly afterwards in one of the big meeting rooms and consisted of a series of presentations on the youth issues which haunt mankind today, given by leading experts who had contributed to the report.

Next it was time for the real side event, entitled "Youth Participation and Citizenship: Governments Must Do More!". It went incredibly well, with over 70 people squeezing in to conference room number five. They had a series of speeches and presentations, first from two guest speakers and then the three of us. We presented the outcome of the consultation conducted with young people in the UK and used these findings to stimulate discussion in the working groups that followed. Attendees were split into three separate sections, each dealing with one cluster of the WPAY, and discussed the issues; the points raised were then converted into recommendations for action.

We were all incredibly happy with the event and how everything went. In the evening we had appropriate celebrations, at a reception for youth delegates taking place at the luxurious residence of Michael O'Neill, the UK's ECOSOC Counsellor. This was also well attended, with many youth reps and national Third Committee members enjoying a pleasant evening of wine and canapes. The UK's Mission staff and the three of us youth reps stayed later and it was great to be able to ask Michael about different aspects of his job.

We went back to the hotel quite late but I had a speech to work on for the next day so was awake for a while more. On the whole this was another great and productive day, especially the side event - we really couldn't have wished for it to go any better.

After a pretty hectic weekend trying to catch some sleep and explore New York, it was another early start. A quick briefing at the UK Mission followed by a more exciting event: the Welcome and Briefing Session for Youth Delegates (Committee Room 8, in case you were interested!).

A few of us had met earlier in the week but it was very exciting to see some new faces, to recognise that more countries were noting the importance of youth delegates - everyone was really enthusiastic and dedicated so the meeting was very positive and productive and we agreed a meeting schedule for the rest of the week. We were an active group of young people and we certainly were going to work rather hard.

At 10am we saw the Opening of the UN General Assembly 3rd Committee - nothing too formal, just recognising the important agenda for young people and other related issues.

The afternoon started with the Youth Delegates side event and we were slightly sceptical about its likely success. It was, however, a very good event although it was mostly attended by youth delegates. At the end of the discussions we celebrated the 10th birthday of the World Programme of Action for Youth by eating some cake! The youngest delegate present, at only 16, blow out the candles and made a wish - we don't know what she wished (that wouldn't make it come true!) but she assured us that it related to the WPAY!

Afterwards, it was time for the UK Youth Delegates to prepare their own side event. At the UK Mission we prepared our areas for discussion and also made presentations for the side event - leaving the office at about 6pm.

8pm arrives and we have another meeting for all the youth delegates. The main topics for discussion were recognition for Member States sending youth delegates and creating a working group for the round-table. The meeting dragged on ever so slightly due to the contentious issue of states being given an award for sending a youth delegate but eventually at about 9:30pm we concluded and most of the European delegates joined some people from the European Youth Forum for pizza!

A busy day but a fun one all the same!