WORLD YOUTH CONGRESS

In the early part of the 21st Century, Peace Child International was best known for its World Youth Congress Series. Here I offer a personal recollection of the major features and outcomes of each of them. Inevitably, I remember more the behind-the-scenes problems and tensions than the front-of-house successes and inspiration but, hopefully, these learnings will be useful to anyone tempted to organise similar Congress in the Future. The major learnings I would pass on are:

1. Appoint and empower a team of young people to manage and feel ownership of the Congress;

2. Focus on Round Tables and Conversation Café meetings, rather than panel debates with Q & As;

3. Have some days devoted to Action Projects – where the youth delegates stop talking and start doing – getting their hands dirty, and / or meeting people away from the Congress site;

4. Have a strong Arts and Entertainment programme – particularly a Talent Show where the young people can entertain each other with their performances, costumes, food and culture;

5. Have an exhibition space – so that delegates can display what they HAVE done, and what skills and achievements they will build on to show what they WILL do;

6. Ensure that each delegate prepares a PAP – a Personal Action Plan – for what they will do when they get home;

7. Do a better job than we did of following up with delegates – creating a global network of them - and making sure that they do what they said they were going to do in their PAPs and then go on to build on those achievements in their subsequent careers and activism;

Many, especially the young delegates, will have no recollection of the problems I encountered. That’s as it should be: my notes are for future organisers, not the Delegates. They will remember each Congress as a life-changing event – as shown in the Videos made by some of them and the Flickr Compendium of some of the many thousands of photographs they took of the different congresses. These show the kind of enthusiasm and excitement each Congress generated and those experiences are the only ones that really matter.

The Peace Child World Youth Congress Series was born out of the UN’s closure of the Agenda 21 / Local Agenda 21 process following the widely perceived “failure” of the 1997 Rio+5 meeting. We asked our youth network: “Should we give up on the pursuit of Sustainable Development? Were all the agreements made at the Rio Earth Summit all a big mistake?” A resounding “NO!!” was the response and the Congress series was initially seen as a kind of Young People’s Earth Summit series focused on Action rather than words. Even at the 1st one in Hawaii, delegates did beach clean-ups and built a Peace Garden. The Action Projects, which were a major feature of all the Congresses and their follow-ups, set new standards for the empowerment of young people to organise their own events, and massively promoted youth agency in the delivery of the UN’s global goals.

However, there were many problems with the World Youth Congress concept – the major one being that it was hardly eco-friendly to fly a thousand young people around the world to talk about saving the environment! That, essentially, is why we discontinued them – that, and the fact that they were so expensive and that they sucked the oxygen out of the other areas of the organisation’s work: they were so time-consuming, PCI’s other work fell by the wayside. This was particularly true of the Peace Child musicals unless – as in Canada with the Kids on Strike Musical, and in Turkïye with Peace Child – Alpha Omega – they were woven into the WYC programme. Also, because each Congress was hosted and paid for by a powerful government, it was often difficult to prioritise the young people’s own agenda over that of the host government which was often different in a myriad of details from PCI’s.

However, in spite of these problems, the Congress series was a wonderful way for PCI to consult its youth members and youth globally on their collective priorities. This record of Congress outcomes, like the Peace Child Books, are an excellent record of their priority concerns – which change remarkably little over the years: the desire for jobs; the thirst for connections and peace; the concern for the environment – its restoration and conservation; and their concern for equity, to fight corruption, human rights – especially for young women. For Peace Child International, the World Youth Congress series became our way to plan our long-term activities. We hope that this record will enable other youth organisations – and youth themselves – interrogate and decide on their own priorities.

David R Woollcombe, March 2024