Back to NYC, back to work!
The train returning me to New York from Montréal arrived perfectly on time, coming into Penn Station at exactly 7.40pm - an unexpected luxury considering the excessive length of my outbound journey! It's great to be back after the charming relative peacefulness of my stay in Canada; I was feeling the vibrant buzz of the city again and the weather seems to have improved.
Thursday was pretty busy. First up was a meeting with the UN Programme on Youth to evaluate the whole experience of being a youth delegate. The few of us remaining were able to have a good, constructive discussion about what we think could be improved and we'll also be submitting written comments. These will be compiled into a document of recommendations the Youth Programme will use in a big meeting with staff from member states' Permanent Missions taking place in mid-November.
Another edition of a yoUNg view (see pic), the youth reps' newsletter, has also been produced after lots of work to get it all sorted. It features reports of events during the WPAY+10 review and information about youth delegates, among other things. The first issue was produced before the review and is online here, on the page which also has a list of national youth delegates this year. Soon issue two will be there as well so please check them out!
At 3pm the youth delegates met up again for a meeting with Turhan Saleh, an official from the UN Development Project (UNDP) responsible for day-to-day organisation of the MDGs (no small task!). It was the second time we had the chance to speak with UNDP staff - last week we met Jeffrey Avina from the Regional Bureau for Africa. Both sessions were good chances to learn more about the processes behind the MDGs, find out how these people think youth can be involved and ask any other questions we could think of.
After this meeting I returned briefly to the Youth Programme offices to pick up some paper copies of the newsletter and discuss ideas for a new website, which will be designed as a key resource for youth delegates. A major point from discussions we had both today and previously was the lack of co-ordination in our group. It's very hard to centrally organise over 50 young people, all with differing roles and responsibilities, to meet at certain times or make specific campaign plans.
One potential way to combat this in future would be to create a well-maintained website where current youth reps can learn about the role and ask ex-youth reps any questions they may have. It could also serve as a useful resource for updates on progress, both during the General Assembly and, more importantly in my view, afterwards. Tomorrow I'll be visiting the office again to investigate the possibilities of this website and hopefully starting to get it organised.
Thursday was pretty busy. First up was a meeting with the UN Programme on Youth to evaluate the whole experience of being a youth delegate. The few of us remaining were able to have a good, constructive discussion about what we think could be improved and we'll also be submitting written comments. These will be compiled into a document of recommendations the Youth Programme will use in a big meeting with staff from member states' Permanent Missions taking place in mid-November.
Another edition of a yoUNg view (see pic), the youth reps' newsletter, has also been produced after lots of work to get it all sorted. It features reports of events during the WPAY+10 review and information about youth delegates, among other things. The first issue was produced before the review and is online here, on the page which also has a list of national youth delegates this year. Soon issue two will be there as well so please check them out!
At 3pm the youth delegates met up again for a meeting with Turhan Saleh, an official from the UN Development Project (UNDP) responsible for day-to-day organisation of the MDGs (no small task!). It was the second time we had the chance to speak with UNDP staff - last week we met Jeffrey Avina from the Regional Bureau for Africa. Both sessions were good chances to learn more about the processes behind the MDGs, find out how these people think youth can be involved and ask any other questions we could think of.
After this meeting I returned briefly to the Youth Programme offices to pick up some paper copies of the newsletter and discuss ideas for a new website, which will be designed as a key resource for youth delegates. A major point from discussions we had both today and previously was the lack of co-ordination in our group. It's very hard to centrally organise over 50 young people, all with differing roles and responsibilities, to meet at certain times or make specific campaign plans.
One potential way to combat this in future would be to create a well-maintained website where current youth reps can learn about the role and ask ex-youth reps any questions they may have. It could also serve as a useful resource for updates on progress, both during the General Assembly and, more importantly in my view, afterwards. Tomorrow I'll be visiting the office again to investigate the possibilities of this website and hopefully starting to get it organised.
Labels: travel
posted by Frederick at 03:30
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