Together with our partners from Sudan, South Sudan, Ethiopia, Kenya, Tanzania, and Uganda, we officially started our new project “East African UN Youth delegates”. This project aims to increase the Youth of East African countries at the international stage and the United Nations (UN) specifically. While youth and youth development are often a topic of discussion in debates on economic development, climate change or participation processes, youths from East African countries are only rarely part of these discussions.
The African UN Youth Delegate Project is a two year’s project reacting to those challenges by aiming to increase representation of the youth of the East African countries at the UN supported by building a network of stable and capable UN Associations1 (UNAs), which will organize UN Youth Delegate programs (UNYD) in the participating countries. The project capacitates East African youth and increases their visibility through workshops, skills trainings, and regional meetings fostering innovative learning concepts which lead up to the actual representation of the UN Youth delegates at the UN General Assembly in New York in autumn on base of a joint vision for the East African region.
Together with our partner organizations we are now at the process of selecting participants and planning the first on-site trainings which we will conduct jointly in March in all 6 countries. Throughout these trainings, 20 selected participants of each country will learn more about the UN, its structures, and processes, while also developing visions and idea that they consider necessary to bring about change. The project is supported by the foreign ministry.