Voice of Youth on Peace Infrastructures
Approximately half of the world population are youth. Across the globe, youth access to creating meaningful change in their lives is spread in very different measures, yet generally they are insufficiently participants to the structures and processes of their society be it local, national or global.
Their role and importance is however underlined in many contexts and discourses and are active both in violent conflict and in building peace.
We would like to bring to your attention an initiative to support a Culture of Peace through a dialogue on new models of peace infrastructure driven by youth.
We are a consortium of youth networks and organisations: Youth Working Group of the Global Alliance for Ministries and Departments of Peace, Children of the Earth, UPeace US.
The 1st Global Youth Summit on Ministries and Departments of Peace will be a youth gathering in 16-17 and 22 September 2009 in San Jose, Costa Rica.
The objectives of the summit are as follows:
To strengthen cooperation between youth and youth organizations who are committed to supporting peace infrastructure from various facets of this global society (including but not limited to civil society, government, universities, the UN family, media etc).
To create an inclusive and sustainable organizational structure in cooperation with the broader Global Alliance for Ministries and Departments of Peace while holding a space for this organizational structure to be its own youth coalition based on the ongoing structural discussions generated from the youth themselves.
To explore the way peace infrastructures can contribute to realizing a Culture of Peace.
To increase the effectiveness of youth participation towards building peace infrastructure in cooperation with the movement for Ministries and Departments of Peace worldwide.
To issue and/or adopt a document with recommendations of youth and youth organizations about new models and what is necessary to build peace infrastructure.
To enhance the peacebuilding and conflict transformation capacity of youth.
To build strong partnerships amongst participating youth and youth organizations.
For more information please address your emails to the Youth Summit Coordination Team [email protected] to Corina Simon, Kelly Shannon and Aaron Voldman.
