World Youth Congress 2010

The World Youth Congress series was born in 1997 following the frustrations of the Rio +5 meeting where Governments and organisations met to discuss what progress had been made since the original Rio Earth Summit. How best to keep the concept of sustainable development in the public eye?  Conceived as a kind of Young People’s Earth Summit, it became, instead, a process of identifying priorities for the new Millennium. The 1st Congress, held in Hawaii in October 1999, was entitled: the Millennium Young People’s Congress (MYPC). It identified ten key priorities for the new millennium – 8 of which closely mirrored the UN’s Millennium Development Goals, agreed a year later at the UN Millennium Summit.  The key message of that first congress was: “Young people want to be active in development, not just beneficiaries of development aid delivered by others…”  So was born the concept of Youth-led Development, and the Be the Change Youth-led Development programme which are central to the whole World Youth Congress Series.