Welcome!
Welcome to WYC-4, Quebec City, August 10-21 2008 – the World Youth Congress series started brilliantly in Hawaii – and each congress has been better than the one before. WYC-4 promises to be even more amazing–more fun, more unique and will create a huge impact beyond the Congress!
For a start, all participants will be selected on the basis of the projects they have done – or propose to do – not the quality of their written application. Also, though only about 600 people will be able to participate in Quebec City at the Congress itself, thousands more will be able to participate in the Virtual Congress at: www.wyc2008.qc.ca
Our generation has a job to do – to make poverty history in a way that sustains and conserves the planet’s fragile environment. Each Congress has seeks the most effective ways for young people to make sustainable change in the world. Quebec 2008 will come up with answers – your answers. And we will get governments and other funding organizations to act upon them.
The Congress schedule will have many of the same features as the previous three: local action projects where delegates will join young people in communities within 250km of Quebec City to help them with a Local Action Project; a full cultural program; Skills Workshops; debates and discussions with development professionals – aiming to get 0.7% of ODA(Overseas Development Assistance) money into Youth-led Development. There will be a massive exhibition – showing YLD projects from around the world – including exhibits from most of the major organizations and individuals working on YLD worldwide.
There will also be a full cultural program – with a talent show, parties, and an up-to-date performance of the Peace Child musical which hasn’t been seen in a few years. And there will be a massive march through the city on the International Day of Youth to hear speeches and music from celebrities and leading politicians.
After the ten days of the Congress, a team will visit Action Projects in other provinces of Canada – lasting anywhere from another week to a fortnight. Those of you who come will get a chance to see more of the world’s second biggest country! And, under intense pressure from delegates of previous World Youth Congresses, we have agreed that there will be no attempt to create a Final Statement from this Congress. We fully intend the government representatives to take away strong policy recommendations – building on the Priorities agreed at Hawaii, the Casablanca Declaration from Morocco, and the Policy Document from Scotland. In Canada, in partnership with the New World Institute, we shall be developing a book that celebrates the achievements of Youth Led Development in the last decade – along with analysis of the values that lie behind youth altruism. This, in conjuction with the policy changes agreed by the World’s major ODA Ministries, UN Agencies and Development NGOs, will be the powerful and lasting legacy of the enormous effort being put in to make WYC-4, Quebec City 2008 the most significant international youth event of the decade. |
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Action Projects
News from projects funded through Scotland: Almost all of the 41 YLD projects funded at the end of WYC-3 Scotland have been completed successfully! Reports on most of them can be found at www.peacechild.org - follow the links from Be the Change to projects.
Amongst the most amazing were Florence Wanjiku’s TOUGH COOKIE
project – where she has taught young single mothers in the vast, appalling Kibera
slum in Nairobi how to bake delicious cookies: they are now selling them in
downtown Nairobi – and hope to make a chain of cookie stalls. Also impressive is
Sok Heng Khim’s project in Cambodia to attract young girls back to their school by
starting a fish farm there. Not only do the students now have a healthy lunch each day
at school, they are selling fish to the local community and raising funds to improve
the school. The projects of Doliev Salamandar in Tajikistan and Allen Bailochan
Tuladhar in Nepal - have shown how IT training and the presence of even just one
computer can transform a small rural community, giving new hope to its younger
citizens.
It is impossible to list all the great achievements of young people and their
projects – but young people have to continue to be thorough
and wiser in their needs assessment, bolder when formulating project ideas and more analytical in their reporting of the implementation of the projects.
This is why we are making this Congress a catalyst for the most hectic schedule of
youth-led development around the world ever! You can be a part of it: in future
updates, we will be listing other organizations that support YLD in many different
ways, meanwhile, the Peace Child International Be the Change program is accepting project
proposals for funding. The deadlines are 31st March and 31st October 2007 Get your project
applications in early – as our Desk Officers are ready to help you ensure that your
proposal is the best it can possibly be before it gets judged by the panel! Check the
www.peacechild.org website – and follow the links to Be the Change! Good luck!
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Website Launch
Launch of the website March 2007: Powered by TakingITGlobal, one of the organizing partners of the Congress, Quebec 2008 will be the most web-driven youth event ever. A highly interactive website will help you get excited and prepared for the Congress. Online Action Project pages, will be a major part of the application process. By creating an Action Project page on the website you will be able to not only showcase your own project well before the conference begins, you will also be able to see what projects other young people around the world are doing and be eligible to become a delegate at the congress.
TakingITGlobal will also provide the tools to hold the Virtual Congress. By using technology to bring the Congress to the people rather than people to the Congress, the Virtual Congress will be as exciting and as important as the Congress itself and will connect thousands of youth from around the world who are unable to come to Canada. The website will have several other features:
- Champions of Youth: often young people are marginalized by societies and governments. But there are a few leaders who have championed the interests of young people at the highest level! The World Youth Congress series has honoured five of them with our Champions of Youth award. We want you to nominate those whom you think should be honoured in Quebec City!
- Skills Workshops: What skills do young people really need to be successful in the field of YLD? We ask you to nominate the skills that you need – and to suggest workshops that you can lead to transmit them.
- Partner links: The success of the World Youth Congress depends on the quality of its partners! As described below, we are encouraging institutions and individuals of all kinds to become partners in the Congress. This process will all be web-based.
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Congress Delegates
Who can apply? As in the past, most Congress delegates will be 18-25. However, for Quebec, we are accepting some up to 30 and some as young as 15! As an International Youth Event, we try to subscribe to the UN’s definition of youth: 15-24 years old. However, child protection laws in Europe and North America apply to young people up to 18, so under 18s always require special chaperoning In Canada, it is the same – but the Forum des Jeunes in Quebec is determined to find a way to accept some delegates who are under 18 – and to keep within the laws of Canada! At the other end of the age limit, Africans and many others tell us that you remain a ‘youth’ in the eyes of their cultures up to 30 at least, often older. It is not really an age thing for them: you become an adult when you move out of the parental home and set up with your own family and home.
So we will be looking at projects and individuals up to age 30. Older people are encouraged to get involved and support young people of their acquaintance, or in their charge, to participate in this, the greatest challenge to their generation. Become an ‘Individual partner’! – sponsor a delegate or a YLD project! If you are Canadian, get involved in hosting a local action project in Quebec – or a post-Congress action project elsewhere in Canada! Most of us never want to admit to being Old! So get involved in the World Youth Congress – and keep yourself young at heart! |
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Guide to Application
Guide to Application – How to apply to take part in WYC-4 Quebec: To apply to be a participant at WYC-4 Quebec, you must first qualify for eligibility by doing – or proposing to do - an action project in the field of Youth-led Sustainable Development. For the previous Congresses, applicants were judged on the quality of the applications they wrote. For Quebec, you will be judged on the quality of what the applicants have done – or propose to do! (We are hoping that many of the projects will be done during the Pre-Congress Action Festival – April-July 2008. That way, delegates will arrive at the Congress with mud on their shoes – fresh from completing their project with strong stories to tell. Also, we hope that several delegates from Europe & North America will chose projects that will sponsor projects in less-developed countries of the South, and maybe travel there to support them in their projects. That process will also draw more useful experience to Quebec City in August 2008.)
To apply to participate in WYC-4, your first task will be to fill out your project application or description. [We shall be accepting some participants on the basis of projects they have already completed, but, as indicated above, the majority of delegates will be those who propose and execute projects in the months leading up to the Congress.] For Project Managers who are under 25 years of age, Peace Child International will be funding some of the Pre-Congress Action Projects through its Be the Change! Action Fund.
Many delegates will be those who have done, or are doing, excellent youth-led projects through other organizations: Ashoka’s Youth Ventures; YBI’s or the YES Summit’s Youth Led Business Start-ups; Free the Children’s youth-led school building initiatives; any one of the thousands of Global Youth Service Day initiatives – along with the millions of brilliant, individual youth-led initiatives that are done without any organizational affiliation.
The Quebec Congress is about stretching the envelope: showcasing young people doing incredible things to help make poverty history and achieve a sustainable world society. So send us your best and your boldest plans – and we will ensure that as many as possible of you become eligible participants in the World Youth Congress application process.
If your project meets the criteria of the youth-led selection committee, an application form will be forwarded to you. Most participants will come as:
- Activists who propose to undertake a compelling and innovative community improvement project with other youth. Probably only one delegate will be accepted from each project – but more can apply if they wish. But it is very important to know that not every project will be of this kind. Projects can also be in the field of art, education and journalism.
- Young Artists must be able to demonstrate projects and performances that they have done which communicate, with impact and creativity, the theme of sustainable development and young people’s role within it.
- Young Journalists must be dynamic young people employed in the mainstream media, who are motivated to report on sustainable development issues and the role of youth in them. They must also, crucially, be able to persuade their editors or bosses to allow them to cover the Congress.
- Young Observers: These are young people who passionately want to get involved in the field of development but who have not done so yet. They want to come to the Congress to learn skills so that they can undertake excellent projects in the future. There is no eligibility criteria in the Observer category – but they will form a minority group at the Congress.
It will, of course, be possible for you to apply in one category and then, if rejected, apply in another category. Also, for young people living in or near Quebec City, there will be ‘Open Events’ which young people and community members can take part in. And, if you are a Peace Child Alumnae – ie. You were involved as a member of a Peace Child cast or as a White House intern – you are welcome to join the Pre-Congress 25th Anniversary Peace Child Reunion – for which no application process is necessary. Simply write to david@peacechild.org - and you will get all the information necessary.
Fees: As in the past, every delegate is responsible for paying his/her own travel to the Congress. The Quebec City Congress will charge all participants a registration fee of C-
$350 (rather less than it would cost you for food and shelter for these ten days!)
Also remember, if you do not live in the USA, Japan, Australia or the EU, you will have to buy a Canadian entry visa: this can cost up to C-$150 and there is no way we can get around this!
Bursary and sponsorship: We are very conscious that not everybody can afford these costs and that is why we are, as always, seeking scholarship money for the flights, visas and Congress fees for help the delegates who absolutely CANNOT pay the registration fees or their visas and flight costs. The bursary fund will be used participants who have completed a project. Observers will have to cover all their costs.
Don’t forget that there will be a Virtual Congress – which costs you absolutely NOTHING to participate in. All eligible applicants will have passwords to take part in, and contribute to, all parts of the Congress online.
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Partnerships
Appeal for Partners: we need partners in all areas – government, civil society; youth groups, media, private sector, schools/colleges, individuals. Click on one of the sector titles to see how you can support the progress of the Congress as an official partner. Go for it! Put your head above the parapet! Become a partner in the World Youth Congress! |
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