Between the 26th and 28th of October the 9th UNESCO Youth Forum was held in Paris, Franceheadquarter of UNESCO. 500 youths across 159 countries and regions in the world engaged in the forum. China was very well reprsented by 31 promising youths.Amognst China’s youth representatives, were Yan Chen, 2014 graduate of College of Civil Engineering, and Zhang Yiqiao, 2013 undergraduate of College of Design and Innovation, both from TJU. Both of them, participated in the forum.
The theme of this forum being “Young Global Citizens for a Sustainable Planet”, it included over a dozen of international issues such as social innovation, youth employment, conflict and sustainable development, and focuses on the status of youth in the world development and provides platforms for youths to participate in international issues. Youths were grouped for the discussions and their opinions and contributions would be organized into reports in the forum. The youth representatives had the chance to intetaract face-to-face with presidents of over 100 well-known universities across the world while engaging in the activities such as capacity building and the promotion of NGO.
The opening ceremony was held in 26th October. On behalf of Chinese government and people, President Xi Jingping sent his special congratulations to UNESCO Youth Forum on the opening of the forum. Bokova,UNESCODirectorGeneral, expressed high expectations to the forum in her opening speech, hoping that representatives present prize such “a golden opportunity, and everyone discuss the future plan together”. Hao Ping, President of the 37th conference of UNESCO and China’s Vice Minister of Education, express his wishes that the youths present at the forum could actively commit themselves to the goals of “eliminating extreme poverty, fighting against inequality and injustice and curbing climate change”, and make their efforts to achieve the New Sustainable Development Goals of UN. Zhang Xiuqin, China’s ambassador to UNESCO, as well as hundreds of youth representatives across the world participated in the forum.
As a significant component of the conference of UNESCO, the UNESO Youth Forum has been held once every two years since 1999. Each time, the youth representatives from all around the world have discussions over the core topics that attract most attention in UNESCO’s working field, and finally the related implications and action plans would be submitted to the conference of UNESCO. For the positive impact that the implications and action plans have made on UNESCO’s decisions, UNESCO Youth Forum has become one of the most important channels through which the youth around the world express their thoughts and take part in global affairs. China has paid closer attention to the UNESCO Youth Forum, with the number of representative springing from 1 in the last forum to 31 in this forum, and to some extent this is also a reflection of Chinese youths’ increasing initiative in global development and affairs.
The fact that two students from Tongji University took part in this forum is clear sign of the outstanding achievements and world standard education that Tongji strive to deliver. The studentsactively interacted with other foreign students, thus getting to know different opinions upon sustainable development and climate change of youth from different cultures. Yan Chen and Zhang Yiqiao took part in the branch venues of Discover the Power of Youth and Personal Development and Sustainable Development respectively, in which they simulated the global situation in 2040. Through discussions on the questions of “what will our planet be like in 2040 if human beings do not take any measure?” and “what the ideal planet would be like in 2040 in youths’ eyes?” combining the current social, ecological, political, economic and cultural problems that the countries are facing, they talked over the responsibility youths should bear and feasible practice to promote popularization of knowledge and education in this era of Internet. FurthemoreYan Chen took part in the group activity with the theme of “protecting world cultural heritage” and discussed with other youths, citing the current situation of the protection of world cultural heritage in the Middle East war area as a template. Considering the present situation of China, and with reference to the problem of how should countries with large amount of cultural heritages protect them effectively, Yan Chen made suggestions on the efforts that governments, tourist attraction developers, international organizations and local residents should make. Zhang Qiaoyi took part in the group activity with the theme of “gender equality”. From this activity Zhang achieved a better understanding of the gender equality situation in different countries from other young people. Zhang was glad to be able to ponder and reflect upon the United Nation’s knowledge training on gender equality, raising her own questions and viewpoint.
Translated by May Language Studio based upon
http://news.tongji.edu.cn/classid-182-newsid-49289-t-show.html
