Wednesday 13 June - WAGGGS Side Event Day

Today I realised a dream by speaking at the UN. I was given the chance to speak on a panel at a side event hosted by WAGGGS. Our event was about Youth Led Solutions to Sustainable Development and we invited some partners from the Major Group for Children and Youth to join us in explaining the role of youth in delivering community and national solutions to the challenges of poverty, environmental sustainability and social justice.




What I said

I spoke about the Girl Guides Australia advocacy project Guides Say, which was a survey of the views and opinions of girls and women aged five upwards who are members of Girl Guides in Australia. The survey asked members to rate the issues they care about on a global, national and local level. When asked to rate the most important UN Millennium Development Goal, MDG 7: Ensure environmental sustainability was rated most important by most youth members.
Girl Guides and Girl Scouts have been celebrating our centenary in various places around the world from 2009-2012. Our centenary theme is plant, grow, share so in Australia the girls planted the trees at a celebration day each year for 3 years. We created a partnership with Mount Annan - one of the largest Botanic gardens in the world. Over 1,000 girls attended each year and took part in a day of environmental and outdoor activities around the garden as well as learning more about our indigenous culture.
Based on the success of this project, I called on those planning youth projects to:
- Encourage young people to find their own voice and identify ways that they can take action
- Ensure that projects involve young people in the planning as well as the execution. Include an evaluation element to build project planning skills and develop a sense of accountability.
- Incorporate an active component to the project. Through Girl Guides we know that young people learn best through doing.
- Think about what other skills youth can develop through the project. Projects offer a great opportunity for non-formal education.
Our event was quite full, at one stage all the chairs were taken. The other speakers on the panel were Girl Guides from Kenya, Canada and Brazil who talked about local sustainable development projects they were working on. We were also joined by Alice Vincent from the World Future Council and Lloyd Russell-Moyle from the European Youth Forum.
Although that we have proven that we stand for much, much more we finished our session by handing out Guide Biscuits (or Girl Scout Cookies) from Australia, Canada and USA




The highlight of my day was being interviewed by UN Radio. I gave a five minute interview about WAGGGS, why we are here and why non-formal education is important.




Unfortunately, we were unsuccessful in gaining access to the Australian government delegation today, but it looks like we have found the meeting for tomorrow. Australia is one of the governments, along with Canada, EU and Nordic nations that can influence the inclusion of non-formal education in the text.
In the evening we were hosted at a reception by the Federação de Bandeirantes do Brasil (FBB, Girl Guide Federation of Brazil). At first the reception was challenging since the Brazilian hosts did not speak English. But after a while someone found some samba music on YouTube and the Brazilians taught us to shake and shimmy.
Tomorrow I will be sitting in on negotiations and helping to write policy for the Major Group for Children and Youth. I will try to tweet more as we go through the day (@jane__harris). Also, my regular Optus email has imploded from the amount of conference emails sent (at least 25 per hour) so if you would like to contact me please use jane.harris.australia@gmail.com

Location:Rio de Janeiro