On 1 March 2011, I presented the YD Program at the ACUNS Conference in the UN Office in Vienna, in session on “How to communicate UN concepts and issues to the next generation?” Here is my speech.
My name is Dana Vyzinkarova, I am a Youth Delegate to the UN from Slovakia and a student at the Diplomatic Academy here in Vienna at the same time. When I first saw the question, I thought of 2 wonderful ways about how to make the UN more familiar to young people: The Model UN and the YD Program. I am here to present the Program of the YD to the UN.
We can all agree that it is a challenge to make the young people interested in the work of the UN. Many consider the UN an institution too far away from their everyday lives and maybe too complicated.
At first, I will explain the idea of the YD Program, then give you some examples from various countries and in the end I will summarize the tools we use to pass the UN issues to young people.
The idea of the YD Program is two way: to bring the UN to young people and the other way around, to bring the young people to the UN. After all, half of the world's population is younger than 25 and it is a basic idea of youth participation to give them some say about the youth policies.
Since 1981 the United Nations recommend Member States to include Youth Delegates in their national delegations in order to ensure direct youth participation. Therefore some countries send a YD to the UN GA (concretely to the 3rd committee which deals with youth related issues) each year, and some do the same with sending to some ECOSOC meetings, for instance the Commission for Social Development (CSD) and the Commission on Status of Women (CSW).
What does one YD do – How does he/she awake the interest in the UN?
Before I speak shortly about my experience in Slovakia, I prepared examples to demonstrate this from all over the globe.
In 2009, the Australian YD visited all states of Australia, meeting young people with all different backgrounds (with a specific focus on young people with fewer opportunities) and discussed their life circumstances and concerns; on each visit he asked the young people to write a letter to the prime minister, Kevin Rudd at that time. He made these young people's statements a central part of his speech in the GA. By doing so he was able to get peer-to-peer feedback about the needs of young people in a direct way and bring these needs to the UN. And what more, the young people saw their words being spoken in the UN – by this simple personal experience, the UN gets much closer to them.
The German and Dutch YDs do similar tour around the country every year, asking about their concerns and introducing the UN concepts, such as Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and others.
Then we had a Saudi Arabian YD who organized a side event on intercultural dialogue at his permanent mission last year. We always write articles about such events, upload the photos to our blogs (that are linked to our unyouth.com and national websites), Facebook etc.
YDs are selected on demonstrated experience in youth work or with a strong interest in youth related issues and therefore those are the people who have a network to which they can transmit the relevant UN messages.
Every YD works on issues of his/hers interest, the German and Swedish Yds promoted gay rights among other, the second German YD came from background of a Catholic NGO and was promoting youth participation, Finnish delegate chose women rights and me, I chose development and humanitarian aid. Hence I was mostly dealing with development cooperation and participated Europe-Africa Youth Summit in Libya just three months ago, where we had a working group on MDGs.
The Slovak YD Program is organized by the National Youth Council, in cooperation with the MFA and Ministry of Education. The delegate is chosen in May, so there is enough time to prepare and establish contact with local young people before going to the UN General Assembly in October.
My activities is this period were
- tour around relevant organizations: UNDP, Habitat for Humanity and many regional organizations
- An internship at the MFA in the summer, at Development and Humanitarian Aid Dpt.
- Live blog day by day from the GA in New York
- Live stream in Slovak radio
The tools we use to approach young people
- unyouth.com website
- similarly, there is an official UN website www.un.org/youth with guidelines how to establish YD Program in your country
- Social media, Facebook, very frequently
- Videos, e.g. from the GA Hall but also in Central Park to become closer to the youth
- We write articles, letters on youth issues, take part in many events, youth conferences
But the major strength of the program is that we are young people from different countries who cooperate, share best practices and inspire each other. What has worked in Germany is likely to work in Slovakia and I might try that activity, too.
I hope I have shared my enthusiasm for the program with you, thank you for your attention.
Dana Vyzinkarova
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