Intro to World Youth Congress

The World Youth Congress series was born in 1997 following the frustrations of the Rio+5 Earth Summit conference which highlighted the fact that, far from increasing as the original Rio 1992 Earth Summit had proposed, Overseas Development Aid had, in fact dropped by 17% since 1992.

So the 1st World Youth Congress was conceived as a kind of Young People’s Earth Summit. However by the time it was finally held, in Hawaii in October 1999, it had developed into a much broader process of identifying priorities for the new Millennium. Entitled, the Millennium Young People’s Congress.It got millions of young people around the world to identify ten key priorities for the new millennium and it turned out that eight of these closely mirrored the UN’s Millennium Development Goals, agreed a year later at the UN Millennium Summit.

World Youth Congress- 2010 Turkey

The 1st youth congress showed that young people wanted to be active in pursuit of these goals: they did not want to wait around for governments or others to do development for them: rather they wanted to get involved in doing development themselves.

So that 1st Congress coined the term Youth-led Sustainable Development, and launched Peace Child International’s (PCI) Be the Change! Youth-led  programme – both of which have become central to the World Youth Congress Series.

Subsequent Congresses – in Morocco in 2003, Scotland in 2005, Quebec City, Canada in 2008 and Istanbul, Turkey in 2010 – have all discussed one main question:

“What is the most effective role that youth can play in development?”

Answers have included: peer-to-peer training, HIV-AIDS awareness raising, youth-led business startups; environmental awareness, protection and conservation; human rights policing; peacebuilding – and many, many other things: given a chance, the right training and investment, young people can contribute almost anything to the effort to eradicate poverty completely from our world.




Each Congress is unique: hosts are encouraged to stamp the identity and culture of their country on their congress and make it their own. But each has similar distinguishing features that give the World Youth Congress Series its own unique feel:

• The Congress is youth-run: Youth who work for both PCI and the local host group form the central part of decision-making on everything from the content of the programme, selection of the delegates, staffing of the Congress, to the choice of speakers at the plenaries and workshops.

• Action: A key part of every congress is Local Action Projects – where all delegates travel away from the Congress site and work with local people to build facilities, do an environmental clean-up or assist in some social programme. The time away from talking and being engaged in community action is where delegates and hosts bond. Action has defined the World Youth Congress Series.

• Actions Before and After the Congress: Just as delegates are urged to complete projects and experiments before the congress so that they have experiences to share with other delegates, so all delegates are expected to return and take actions using the knowledge they have gained. A  key aspect this year, is creating action in the run up to Rio+20, so that us youth can show the UN and world governments that we are taking action and our prepared for a green economy. PCI also generates grants for 15-20  “Post-Congress Action projects” developed by delegates,that show real potential of creating positive community change.

• A strong cultural/arts programme: Peace Child International takes its name from the musical, Peace Child, which promotes solutions to global problems. Therefore, PCI seeks to promote all forms of communication to promote youth messages in the most powerful possible way. So bring your instruments, bring your dance, films, painting, poetry or stand-up comedy skills and be prepared to share them in the Congress Talent Shows and arts evenings.

• A friendly and cooperative environment generated by its young hosts and organisers: – where young people and experienced sustainability  experts can meet on equal terms in informal round table discussions so that each can learn from each other. We’ve seen some of the best ideas come from informal discussions, the sharing of experiences, stories and inspirations of young activists working in their own communities.

Source: http://wycrio2012.org

The way to be a social platform developer

Not long ago, mom says I should earn money and marry to a girl from family of rich and power because she heard many did so to fulfill family needs. Naturally, I see my family have no need like that as mom did her best to encourage me to study that had shaped me not to be a typical Vietnamese in a negative way and led me to the thought what I do is more meaningful: to learn and build social platform that anyone can and should apply it to have a happy life. Deep in my heart, I see that my mom is not a person of greed but some kind of being affected by surround environment. Without the encouragement from the strong will of my mom, never did I have escaped from thinking limited inside the tiny box.

New house arrangement and Nemo billboard

After one night staying awake to arrange my online house, now it is easier for everybody to visit its every corner, which makes me hope more people will come in and read and drop some "gold" or "diamond" so that I have more items to do exhibition to attract more visitors. :D

Today I will be performing puppetry with my colleagues for an exchange event at the Saigon Zoo and Botanical Gardens. Who want to enjoy public puppetry show, please just come and see around 1pm and 3pm.

And from today, anyone who wish to contribute any article of any topic or interest in my ranges, please just send yours to littlehorsefish@gmail.com. I am more than pleased to publish your items with its original author's name to readers in my networks.

About the Nemo billboard, oh it's a new crazy idea, that's to create a music billboard with my own standards to check if it works like other billboards or not. Who have the same ideas? :P

Just a note for the new year

I was in the middle of nowhere and I feel like I am the very bad person to many.

I owed many people which I met by chance through the years with their supports and even sacrifices to my journey.

As a kid, and still a kid, I did not realize that I should do something to SHOW THEM how I feel grateful for them and that I should do something in return to that.

And when I start to think as an adult, I know that I will never return them all what they have given me, at the right timepoint of life, which is can not be measured by money or time but by love and gratitude.

The habit of focusing on action rather than expression have put me go further in some specific fields of interest but it have put me backwards to the rest of society.

As a adult, but still a kid, I have to learn to express that would want to do anything good to everybody in my ability in my fields of expertise, as what I have been doing for years without recognition or with misrecognition from my beloved ones.

I am always thinking big and always found my like-minded to share and learn from each other, but I forgot to think small with the persons I have strong dependence on.

I saw a big conflict in me.

I have to solve it.

I need to keep what describes me as a specific person to the society.

And I must change to integrate my role as specific person with the other as a normal person.

It will be very hard to do.

But that's what I should do in order not to waste my life doing things that my beloved ones do not benefit from.

The last thing for this note I would want to say: I love what am doing now in community activities, though sometimes misinterpreted as I am spending money as a rich man to charity funds and we all know that is not true, because I find it a good way for me to return what the community, through specific persons, have given me for years.

I believe in common knowledge of good karma. The more you do good things, the more you receive good things as well.

Everything happens for a reason. And if you can do something good for others' children, they can also do something good for your children too.

See the Vietnamese version of this post here: http://family.littlehorsefish.com/2011/02/mot-ghi-chu-nho-cho-nam-moi.html

Unicorn dance for first day of lunar new year

Every lunar new year, my brother accompany his friends in the unicorn dance team to perform around the township. Below is the footage I took with my brother on February 3, 2011 or the first day of lunar new year, which is known as year of the cat in Vietnam and Vietnamese-speaking communities, and year of the rabbit in China and other Asian countries as well as Chinese-speaking communities around the world. You can enjoy the footage with my voice as narrator. :)