International Youth Parliament

The International Youth Parliament, held in Sydney from October 19-28, gathered over 240 young people from about 150 countries. This event was the fruit of an initiative of Brett Solomon, from Oxfam - Australia and co-ordinator of the Youth Workshop for Australia-Pacific. It aimed at having the participants seek youthful solutions for the challenges they face world-wide in 3 areas: "breaking the cycle of poverty", "youth in conflict" and "cultural activism". The focus of the Parliament was for young people to get new skills, to network and to develop concrete individual and collective strategies to address the issues identified.

Indeed, each participant developed an individual project to be implemented when going back home. Moreover, within their working groups (pertaining to the 3 themes listed above), the participants worked together to identify the issues they face, make proposals to address them and draw concrete collective projects to foster social change on these issues. The projects elaborated are very diverse - from developing "green" (environmentally-oriented and/or respectful) jobs to lobbying airline companies for them to show culture-sensitive videos of the destination countries during the flight, or to campaigning in support of the UN Convention on the Rights of Children.

The Parliament was also a wonderful occasion for young people to get to know one another and each other’s culture: there was a real emulation during the "share your culture" sessions over lunch and many warm, funny and moving moments. The IYP also offered for many opportunities to network, build friendships and partnerships. This is now maintained with the help of Internet discussion lists that make ongoing work and follow-up easier.

From the very start, the Youth Workshop has been strongly involved in the IYP, through Brett Solomon and Jane Higgins but also thanks to the efforts and contributions of the whole team to identify potential delegates, find funding, help set up the agenda, design the program and the methodology. Besides, about 15 members of the YW attended the Parliament, constituting the bulk of the facilitation team and a small team of "dph butterflies" recording the experiences of the delegates and of the Parliament workings.

For all of us, the IYP was a wonderful opportunity and a great learning experience. Engaging with such good and diverse delegates, interacting with the team of volunteers who were the core and spirit of the IYP and whose dedication and work was most remarkable, implementing and adjusting a 10-day long working process were all sources of many learnings and many joys. Moreover, for YW members, the IYP proved to be an extraordinary moment for our life and work as a team. The diversity and complementarity of our skills, experiences, fields of expertise, and sensitivity, our habits to work as a team, our practice and approach of how to "connect people", our cross-cultural skills constituted decisive elements in the good functioning of both the organization and the work of the delegates. They were also a great source of satisfaction and support for YW members.

At the same time, the IYP was experienced by some of the Youth Workshop members as a very exhausting experience on dealing with cultural differences, organizational issues and personal relations - mainly for internal material and organizational reasons. photoThe Parliament was indeed fraught with some problems and tensions around issues of material conditions, agenda and timetable, language and cross-cultural communication, respective roles of various members of the organization team, and showed the sensitivity and significance of good internal communication amongst organizers. Also, as the Alliance and the YW have a non-institutionalized approach, it became a complex issue to define our role and recognize us not as mere sponsors, but as part of the co-ordination itself.

Thus, this opportunity of meeting wonderful people and photosupporting youth role in promoting in social change, combined with our rich and fruitful experience as facilitators of such an event, beyond all difficulties, has strengthened our will to organize similar meetings in the future. And we are happy to say that new co-ordinators for the YW have joined our dynamic in Argentina and Spain! We are also more sure about the importance of the networking approach the YW has developed through the last ears as a path for an innovative tool for social change and we wish to get more and more involved with the other Alliance working groups members, exchanging knowledge, visions and also feeding them with the amazing people we have the opportunity to meet and involve in our network.