Peace Child Newsletter

Everything is coming together well for the Canada congress. More and more delegates are getting their visas! Confirmations are flooding in every day BUT – there is still space: so, if you were turned down because you applied too late, or would like the chance to apply again, please write to your Desk Officer and we will reconsider you applications although please be aware that we cannot offer any more funding to delegates.

Latin America: latin@peacechild.org
Asia: asia@peacechild.org
Europe: Europe@peacechild.org
Africa: africa@peacechild.org

We apologise for not bring able to give you the details for the Virtual Congress but watch this space for the home page which is coming soon to a computer near you. The World Youth Virtual Congress (WYVC) is being run for all members of Taking IT Global. (If you are not a member of TakingITGLobal yet it’s extremely easy to become one: go to www.takingitglobal.com and follow the links) The WYVC will allow those in our network not able to make it to Canada to watch podcasts of the plenaries, submit questions to the VIPs and Workshop facilitators, join in blogs and chatrooms and, most importantly, submit projects for funding as Post-Congress Be the Change initiatives, which will be selected and announced at the Closing Ceremony of the Congress.

Do send in your post congress action project proposals, the initial deadline for these to be proof read is the 31st July! It will be easiest for all of us and you will have time to receive feedback/advice if you submit them then. The official hand–in date however is the 16th August at the Congress.

Thank you to all those who are working so hard to get themselves to Canada, thank you to our wonderful, incredibly youth-friendly Canadian hosts, thank you to all who are planning to do workshops or mount exhibits of their work! We are nearly there, and we are all extremely excited. See you in Quebec City in August!!

June has been the most crucial and exciting month for the Youth Climate Change Booklet. It has been non-stop and hectic, but extremely successful and rewarding. We enter July in great shape, with most of the work done and ready to put the final touches on the publication.
The month started with the arrival of the Youth Editorial Team (Viki, Nafiz, Dana, Karina and Charles) on June 1st and they stayed for two weeks as we worked each day to compile articles, poems and images for each spread of our 36 pages. This was an intense but highly productive session which yielded the bulk of the material. The editorial meeting was a lot of fun and we hope our visitors gained as much from us as we did from them, both professionally and culturally. It was a pleasure to have them.

Two visits from our UNDP liaison Marisol Sanjines at first then Marisol and Pedro Manuel Moreno helped us to mould this rough form into one conducive to the UNDP needs as well as our vision. The remaining weeks after the departure of the editorial team has been spent fine tuning, fact-checking, and editing to the point that the penultimate draft in the hands of the UNDP for final approval. Then it is full steam ahead to printing and then the launch in August at the World Youth Congress.

Our Educational coordinator and a long standing Peace Child has left us for 3 weeks to go on an Exchange sponsored by the British Council to Indonesia. The exchange links people working with NGO’s in Britain and Indonesia which it is a great opportunity for inter-cultural learning.

We look forward to hearing all about Tanya’s experiences and especially look forward to the return visit from her partner to Peace Child in November.

Last month many of the Peace Children attended the CIVICUS Youth Assembly in Glasgow, they participated in seminars on Health, Poverty, Climate Change and Equality. Emma was interviewed on the BBC World Service Program ‘World Have your Say’.

One of the exciting things to come out of this grand gathering of the World’s most active youth was the birth of ‘First Step’. We can’t say much more than this now as it is well and truly in planning stage but to get an idea of the concept visit
http://ymex.org/video/view.html?ID=365

Rochester production team has cast 22 great youth (ages 10 to 21), for the August world premiere of this new environmental adaptation of the musical written by David Woollcombe and David Gordon. PC alumni Deborah Spake (Director), Sarah Manya Hertzberg (Choreographer)

and Terry Watson (Musical Director) and Rick Starapoli (who went on Peace Child tours in the 1980s) have put together an amazing cast. They will be joined by Steve Riffkin for the last week of rehearsals and for the shows in Rochester and Quebec City!