Vietnam Action Network for Youth - VANY

Placing Youth at the Forefront of Efforts to Achieve the MDGs

When the Millennium Development Goals were announced in 2000 by the United Nations, not enough people knew. In late 2002, two groups were created, the Millennium Project, commissioned by the Secretary-General to devise strategies for achieving the Goals, and the Millennium Campaign, which encourages citizens around the world in their efforts to hold governments to account for the promises made at the September 2000 Millennium Summit. In 2002, the Global Youth Action Network became involved in the preparatory committee for the 57th Annual NGO-DPI Conference at the UN, whose theme was MDGs: Civil Society Takes Action. The following spring, responding to a friendly challenge by Prof. Jeffrey Sachs of the Millennium Project, GYAN helped to convene and act as secretariat for an ad-hoc committee of youth experts, who recently released for consultation an extensive paper which supports our belief: that young people should be at the forefront of the movement to achieve the MDGs. Because it's our future we're talking about.

GYAN's MDG Strategy-at-Large includes :

Gathering the Facts and Raising Awareness. Following a successful series of workshops at the 2004 Annual NGO-DPI Conference, a partnership was formed with the World Federation of United Nations Associations, with whom we developed a section on youth for their upcoming Report on the MDGs. An Ad-Hoc Working Group was created, for which GYAN served as Secretariat, and an on-line consultation was organized by the group with 350 international youth participants. A report entitled “Youth and the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs): Challenges and Opportunities for Implementation” was released in December 2004 by the Ad-Hoc Group for consultation, following 6-months of research, and will be published in the Spring.

Mobilizing Action. GYAN believes that change happens when there is real action. To supportive our strategy, a tri-partite agreement was signed in 2003 between TakingITGlobal, GYAN and the Millennium Campaign, committing our institutes to a strategy for engaging youth in MDG-related projects. In April 2005, an MDG Youth Toolkit will be distributed globally to thousands of organizations, including an MDG Youth Action Guide. Later this year, National MDG Youth Campaigns will be launched in 30 priority countries as part of this collaboration.

Impacting Policy. Change can only be sustained when it reaches the policy level, and youth voices are critical in that process. In collaboration with the Millennium Campaign and GYAN's strategic partners abroad, we will seek to engage youth in advocacy and government lobbying, and have them participate, where possible, in the poverty reduction strategy papers being produced by priority countries.

To get more information, please write to the attention of the MDG Coordinator.

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posted by Vietnam Action Network for Youth - VANY @ 3/23/2005 09:59:00 AM