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Posted: Aug. 17 2006,09:23 by David from
INTERNATIONAL - Fundacion Cultura de Paz |
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Questionnaire - World Alliance Of Young Men's Christian
Associations :
1. a) If funds were available, what
youth activities related to a CoP would your organization like to
do?
First of all it is necessary to stress that the real work
of the YMCAs is done by the local and national YMCAs, and our role
here at Geneva in the World Alliance is to promote and coordinate
this work which is done by the 45 million members of YMCAs in 124
countries.
A good example is a case where a group from the
YMCA in Northern Ireland, including both Protestant and Catholic
youth, went to the Middle East to meet with Arab and Israeli youth.
Apparently the results were very positive for everyone, with
good effects resulting in both Ireland and for Jerusalem.
We
see the capacity-building of young leaders to engage in global
advocacy work as a priority. We don't tell them exactly what
to advocate. That's their decision. But culture of peace
is one of our priorities at the YMCA.
We have a plan under
development which may be called "Challenge-21 in Action" which would
include training events at a country level, including in countries
with ongoing conflicts, for capacity-building of young leaders on
issues related to a culture of peace for awareness-raising both at
national and international levels. It designed to help them
understand economic, social and political issues at a global level
and how they relate to action at a national and local level.
It is important to stress that it must be action-focused and
capacity-building for sustained action, not just another brief
campaign or website.
The training will engage multi-national
groups of YMCA youth who will go to a particular country, e.g. Sri
Lanka, work with YMCA youth there and then return with their
experience and knowledge back to their home country.
We see
this as the beginning of campaigns that are youth-initiated and
sustainable that include lobbying and advocacy of governments to
promote a culture of peace. We spend so much time
"fire-fighting" on particular issues, but we must also address the
root causes of injustice and conflict.
Following up these
national campaigns with participation by multi-national teams, then
we would like to see a global youth forum where they would all come
together for continued training, sharing of good practices, and
perhaps they would come up with their own global campaign, building
on that they have already done. This must be youth-led, not
imposed by national YMCAs or the World Alliance, but done by the
young people themselves. They chose the focus and what the
campaign looks like.
Such a campaign needs to be sustainable,
not just "one-shot," and for that reason it should be done in
strategic alliance with other international youth organizations, not
just YMCAs.
If funds were available for the purpose, the
synergy among like-minded youth organizations could be greatly
facilitated. Too often NGOs compete with each other rather
than sharing their expertise and complementary resources.
However, it would help to have some financial incentive to
encourage cooperation across organizations.
b) What
non-financial support does your organization need to do these
activities?
In some countries YMCAs have access to good ICT
facilities, for example video-conferencing which they need to take
part in planning international initiatives, but in other countries
these facilities are not available. Hence, anything you could
do to help make such facilities available would be extremely
useful.
2. b) What CoP youth activities/initiatives do you
think the UN should do?
Perhaps the UN country offices could
help make available ICT facilities to youth working on these
projects, as mentioned above.
Also, it would be good if
people from the UN could help us with the training of youth for
effective lobbying and advocacy for a culture of peace. It
would help us gain experience that is truly international in
scope.
The UN does try to involve youth in its work, but
there should be better coordination of its youth policy, as there
are many initiatives that are not "joined-up". There should
also be more effective consultation with international youth
organizations and better mainstreaming of its World Program of
Action for Youth and youth voice in the MDGs.
OPTIONAL
QUESTIONS
3. Do you have any suggestions or recommendations
for improving youth participation in CoP activities on any levels
(UN, government, civil society)?
The World Alliance of YMCAs
cooperated with several other international youth organizations
including the scouts, the girl guides and girl scouts and the YWCA
to put together a report for UNICEF called, "A Call to Action:
Children and Young People Participating in Decision Making.".
It is available on our website at http://www.ymca.int/index.php?id=772 .
In
general, youth need to be given an opportunity to make and take
decisions, not just consulted. Also they need to be
mainstreamed into the ongoing decision-making process a all levels,
not just treated in a separate youth section or given token
participation. They need to take part in the actual drawing up
and implementing of recommendations.
4. To ensure the best
possible benefit of a UN Voluntary Fund for youth and CoP, how
should it be managed/administered?
For sure, youth need to be
involved in the administration. See above remarks on youth
participation.
From an NGO perspective it will be important
that such a fund be managed as close to the ground as possible,
avoiding layers of bureaucracy and report-writing. Our
experience shows that it is not worth it to apply for small sums of
money when the guidelines are too strict and where the follow-up
reports are so cumbersome that they take time away from
implementation.
5. How can youth not yet involved in CoP
activities be reached and motivated?
Youth should talk to
youth, in their own contexts, as close to the grass roots as
possible. For example, in our case it is the local YMCAs that
are able to do this best.
8. My response to this
questionnaire is my personal opinion
Name of organization:
41-22-849-5100
*************************
Sujet : Re:
Interview for UN Youth Fund
Date : 8/17/06 8:39:16 AM Eastern
Daylight Time
From: jenny@ymca.int (Jenny Aris)
To:
mail@decade-culture-of-peace.org
CC:
alexander@ymca.int
Fichier
: UN_youth_fund_our_responses.doc (31232 octets)
Durée du
téléchargement (52000 bits/s) : < 1 minute
Hi
David,
My pleasure. Here are the notes with a few changes and
the link to the document added. I look forward to hearing the
outcome of your research.
Kind regards
Jenny Aris
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