YUVA Meet 2013

YUVA MEET 2013
International Youth Centre (Vishwa Yuvak Kendra), Delhi, India
28-29 January 2013


The Youth Unite for Voluntary Action (YUVA) Meet was held on 28–29 January 2013 as one of the special events organized prior to TERI (RCE Delhi)’s annual international event namely Delhi Sustainable Development Summit. The YUVA Meet has been organized annually since 2009 and in close collaboration with the Government of India – Ministry of Youth Affairs and Sports, Tetra Pak, British Council and UNU-IAS.

 

YUVA Meet 2013 focused on the theme of ‘Green Growth - Preparing Youth for Sustainable Living’ aiming at enhancing the knowledge and understanding of youth on issues and challenges related to sustainable development and green growth and developing their capacities to be able to contribute to building a more sustainable society that is low carbon, resource efficient, and socially inclusive.

The meeting was attended by more than 220 youth including university students, researchers, and NGO workers from all over India and abroad. 15 selected youth representatives from 10 RCEs (RCE Nizhny Novgorod, RCE Bohol, RCE Greater Dhaka, RCE Minna, RCE Swaziland, RCE Khomas-Erongo, RCE Cha-am, RCE Srinagar, RCE Guwahati and RCE Delhi) participated in the two-day meeting. One session was dedicated to RCEs to highlight intentional perspectives on roles of youth for green growth and two RCE youth representatives presented their engagement in RCEs and shared their experiences and ideas as to how youth can play an active role in promoting green growth as agents of change.

Overall, the YUVA Meet provided a great platform for RCE Youth to share their experiences, challenges and lesson learnt through their activities and give new insights into issues related to SD/ESD.


RCE Youth Session
TERI University, Delhi, India
30 January 2013


The RCE Youth Session was organized on 30 January 2013 with participation of 15 RCE Youth representatives. The programme was designed in a way that the participants could gain better understanding about the RCE Initiative as a global learning space and identify a framework of action on youth for the RCEs.

To begin with, UNU-IAS presented the background information on the RCE movement and briefed about the thematic discussion on youth in the past Global RCE Conferences. The presentation enabled the participants to position themselves and their activities as a key part of the RCE movement and to recognize added values to being part of the network.

The participants were then asked to make a short presentation on their own RCEs and youth activities. Prior to the RCE Youth Session, all participants were given an assignment to write a ‘story’ about their RCEs and the role of youth in promoting ESD in their regions. Their stories will be further revised and elaborated after they return to their countries and will be uploaded to the RCE Portal to share with other RCE members in due course.

The latter half of the session was carried out in world café format and was dedicated to in-depth discussion on the development of a framework of action on youth for the RCEs. The ‘Positioning RCEs’ paper was introduced as a basic strategy for actions, which emphasizes capacity building and empowerment of youth as well as youth’s involvement in communications and outreach. The details on the world café session can be found in the attached document ‘Framework of Action on Youth for the RCEs’.