austraLasia 768
ASIA-PACIFIC YOUTH TAKE LEADING ROLE IN GENEVA
'INFORMATION' SUMMIT
GENEVA: 11th December, '03
- World leaders from 176 nations, many of them the nation's president or
vice-president, are expected tomorrow to declare a UN-backed recognition of
youth as 'developers, contributors, entrepreneurs and decision-makers' in the
world of information and communications technology. This will be by far
the strongest langauge ever employed concerning youth in a UN declaration.
It has not come to this point by accident. Young people themselves have
been strongly involved in the leadup to the World Summit on the Information
Society which concludes its first phase in Geneva tomorrow and will re-open for
the second phase in Tunis in November 2005. Nick Moraitis, a young
Australian, has been coordinating young people's efforts at the WSIS. Nick
works for TakingITGlobal, an enterprise developed by the YCDO (Youth Creating
Digital Opportunities) coalition. He sees the achievement of the proposed
statement on youth (youth meaning those between 14-28 years in this context) as
going far beyond a token 'helping youth' to being a strong paragraph on the
centrality and possibility inherent in young people's contribution to the
development of the information society.
Youth from India, Japan, the
Philippines and Indonesia-Malaysia-Borneo have been prominent in preparatory
activities for the summit, many of these activities having an influence far
beyond the notion of simple 'preparation. In India, for example there is
'Propoor', registered in Kolkotta and Singapore as far back as 1998. It
involves youth taking sustainable development initiatives which respond to the
needs of under-represented and marginalised sectors of society throughout South
Asia.
The Salesians are represented amongst 677 non-government organisations
at the summit through the Salesian Sisters.
_____________________________
'austraLasia' is an email
service for the Salesian Family of
Asia-Pacific
