It's been a full on day and a half of workshops and discussions so far in Leon, Mexico! Yesterday there were lots of yawns and red eyes about, as i think there'd been a few other 'creative' itineraries like mine, which led to significantly increased travel times and lack of sleep. There are 400 of us here representing every region of the world in these meetings, and the diversity of orgs and work that they all do is really inspiring.Our main task at the mo is putting together a recommendations paper to present to the government delegation of Youth Ministers & Diplomats who will be meeting from Wed-Fri this week to discuss the international youth agenda for the next year and beyond.
Delegates met to define recommendations under the following headings:International Cooperation, Participation, Security and Justice,Sustainable Development
Poverty, Health, Technology and Innovation, Education, Employment, Culture, International Migration and Gender.
My main contributions were to the Sustainable Development and Education working groups, where i was able to raise many of the ideas which young people in oz shared with me in their survey responses!
I had a great discussion with a guy from Norway about the universal right of people to access education in their first language (pretty relevant for Indigenous Australians I think), and at one stage was lobbying with other members of the Oceanic region for inclusion of a specific demand for a legally binding internatl agreement on Carbon Pricing/Climate Change.
The work from individual groups then fed back into a big 'plenary' session with everyone and were opened for review, further editing and finalisation. The system of voting yes/no to accept different bracketed phrases (the usual editing system used at the UN) almost did my head in and was super lengthy — but that is the price of democractic input I guess!I'll post a copy of the final draft of recommendations as soon as I can get my paws on it.
It was really cool being part of the formulation + drafting process, especially when there are at least 3+ language groups in a room and real-time translation with nifty headphone sets and translators in little cubicles is facilitating the discussion.I'd also encourage people interested in contributing to head straight to http://fusion.youth2010.org/ where you can have further direct input on different topics.
Beyond conferency things- I'm yet to taste the local tequila or dancing haunts, but i'll keep you posted!
Hasta Manana Amigos! : )
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