Greetings! This past week has been an exciting one here in the United States, and elsewhere in the world, with the inauguration of new president Barack Obama. Clearly, so many of us are hungry for change and belief that things can get better. I believe why so many of us in the United States believe that President Obama can help usher in these changes is because he brings people together, makes everyone feel included. This allows people to become inspired to act together. While this has been something highlighted by the US media lately, this is not a new phenomenon. People have been coming together to work on common issues for a long time. This past week I have been thinking a lot about how people can come together as I have been preparing for the upcoming Commission for Social Development meeting at the United Nations (UN).

For those of you who are not familiar Commission for Social Development, it is a conference held every year for two weeks at the UN. This year is the 47th meeting and will take place February 4-13. The commission has 43 member states (countries) involved and usually somewhere between 150-200 civil society organizations (groups of regular people like you and I). This year the topic will be “Social Integration” and discussing how nations can build socially inclusive “societies for all”. In non-UN language, this means countries will work to come up with written agreements to follow that allow everyone—regardless of ethnicity, nationality, gender, religion, age, etc, etc.—to feel accepted and respected by their countries.

My work the past four months has been preparing a statement that puts together all the ideas and recommendations GYAN members contributed during our online consultation regarding social integration, or how we have been referring to it—social inclusion. I have enjoyed reading all the amazing points and views GYAN members take, and from that, being able to translate all those into one cohesive statement. Our statement is now posted on the Commission website as an official UN document in six different languages, along with other statements from more organizations all working towards the same goal of social inclusion. It is so exciting to know that youth voices—YOUR VOICES—are going to be heard by the member states in attendance!

Getting young people involved in the discussions is so important, but the work does not end here! The information has to be shared with our communities. More importantly, we must remind our governments of the promises they have made and demand that they abide by them. It is such a big job and cannot be done alone. If you are unfamiliar with the Commission for Social Development and the online consultation GYAN held, I invite you to take a look sites and see what young people are saying. GYAN members have shared their recommendations on how their governments can promote social inclusion, how do you think your government can do this? Or even, what is social inclusion?