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REGIONAL MEETINGS
Atlantic
& Indian Ocean
Caribbean
Pacific
Caribbean
In
April 2004, two key partners, the UNESCO National
Commission for St Lucia and the Organisation of
Eastern Caribbean States Environment and Sustainable
Development Unit (OECS-ESDU), proposed holding
a sub-regional Caribbean youth meeting for the
nine OECS countries to prepare for YVIL.
After
some discussion, it was decided to widen the scope
of this meeting to include additional Caribbean
countries. The meeting was initially scheduled
for July, but with the postponement of
the main governmental meeting, the Caribbean preparatory
meeting was held from 25-27 October 2004 in Castries,
St Lucia.
Twenty-nine
youth participants from 14 countries (Anguilla,
Antigua and Barbuda, Aruba, Bahamas, Barbados,
British Virgin Islands, Dominica, Jamaica, Netherlands
Antilles, St Kitts and Nevis, St Lucia, St Vincent
and the Grenadines, Trinidad and Tobago, Turks
and Caicos Islands) participated in the two-day
meeting. A full
report on the meeting is available on the
web.
Resource
people came from OECS-ESDU, UNESCO, Caribbean
Youth Environment Network, Government of St Lucia,
Ministry of Education Trinidad and Tobago, St
Lucia Red Cross and the Caribbean Community.
The
goals of the meeting were to:
- Collaborate at a regional level to create
awareness among youth on the Small Island
Developing States Programme of Action
- Facilitate preparations by Caribbean youth
for the 'Youth Visioning for Island Living'
event to be held in Mauritius alongside the
main governmental meeting in January 2005.
The
programme
for the two-day meeting focused on the three main
themes, specifically the issues themselves and
activities and projects that would address some
of these issues.
Like
with Youth Focus Bahamas, this preparatory meeting
was a testing ground for the larger YVIL meeting
in Mauritius.
The
youth participants were well prepared and discussions
on the main themes were informative and productive.
However, in discussing activities and projects
that youth could undertake to address some of
these issues, it became apparent that some further
direction was needed.
Overnight
the resource persons worked to develop a project
template that would provide a framework for
youth participants to use for their followup projects
and activities.
In
addition, the programme was modified to provide
more in-depth discussion on the project proposal
template. This project
template became the one used in the YVIL meeting
in Mauritius.
The
Caribbean meeting, besides preparing the youth
for YVIL, also provided some valuable lessons
for the larger event, especially in providing
a framework for the youth to develop their projects
and follow-up activities.
Pacific
Key
partners in the Pacific, the Pacific Concerns
Resources Centre and the Secretariat for the Pacific
Community proposed holding a regional preparatory
meeting for Pacific youth in Fiji at the beginning
of November 2004. To this end a Pacific representative
attended the Caribbean meeting in St Lucia to
learn from their experiences.
However,
the Pacific meeting was not held because
the expected funding was not received, and the
proximity to the Christmas holidays and the YVIL
event in Mauritius meant that some youth would
have had to travel to two meetings within two
months.
AIMS
No plans
were proposed to hold a preparatory meeting in
the AIMS region. This region is a relatively
new grouping, and islands here do not yet
have a history of working together as exists in
the other two regions.
Preparatory Activities:
- Regional Meetings
- National Activities
- Art Contest
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