The Project

In this project young people will be trained in how to start up an information campaign and during the project in every country an information campaign will run connected to the Millennium Development Goals. You can also give your input and share your experiences on this website. In the end of this project a handbook will be available in Russian and English and you can order or download it for free. The European organisations have a wide experience in setting up information campaigns and reaching and involving young people actively by using diverse working methods. The Asian organisations have a lot of experience when it comes to the Millennium Development Goals. The experience all organisations have inside the field of youth work will be exchanged during the project and the project will be an example of good practice. This project has a training part and a practice part. The training part is focused on capacity building and leadership development for youth organisations in the participating countries. During the trainings the participants will gain new skills and knowledge on diverse working methods and on how to run an information campaign. These skills and the new knowledge will raise the capacity of the participants on personal level and by that the NGO’s on organisational level. The practice part of the project (running the information campaign) is to put new learned skills and knowledge into practice and these will be evaluated during the project. The practice part is essential since we consider that learning in experience will help the participants even more to assimilate the new learned skills and knowledge. The skills people will learn connected to the information campaigns are essential for all NGO’s. An information campaign can serve different aims. You can use it to make people aware on a certain topic, in this case the Millennium Development Goals. But almost every NGO’s struggles to reach and to get volunteers. If you know how to make a good information campaign it will be easier to get people involved and to reach them and by that an information campaign can become a powerful tool to increase participation of young people inside the volunteer sector. Loesje

Join

You can be part of this project:

* Share information , ideas for actions, campaigns you have to inspire each other

* Order the handbook that will be created in July/August for free and help distributing it in your city, mail to rola (@) loesje.org

* Download material and use it to do actions/campaigns with friends or your organisation

* Inform other people about this website and the possibilities

 

The Partner Organisations

In this project there are five organisations participating from different countries: Germany, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Nepal and Latvia. For more details on the organisations please follow the links.

Also see the sub pages bellow:

Creative group MYSTYLe art

Creative group MYSTYLe art is an organisation where people can discover and express their style and qualities. They are doing many activities connected to media, pr and art and try to give every activity and project creative input.

Creative group MYSTYLe art is based in Riga, Latvia but does international projects such as international exchanges. The latest exchange they participated in was a dj / vj project in the Netherlands. At the moment they are working on a media exchange connected to the world press freedom day and they are part of this project.

For more information:

FSA FLEX Alumni Association of Kazakhstan

FLEX Alumni Association of Kazakhstan is a non governmental organization created by outoing young persons of Kazakhstan. The members of FSA FLEX Alumni Association are alumni of Future Leaders Exchange program, educational exchange program providing scholarships for best students administered by US Government since 1992. Though only in 2001 alumni of this program who studied in the US high schools during one year had created a registered legal entity.

All alumni of FLEX exchange program automatically become the members of the association.Currently, the youngest member of Associatino is 16, and the oldest one is 30 years old. De jure we have about 900 members, though de facto, there are about 60-80 active members in Kazakhstan who work and try to organize different events through out the year. The rest become just the participants of different projects. We aldo attract different volunteers and various organizations to join our projects.

FLEX Alumni Association of Kazakhstan is responsible for organizing and executing of various projects that responds to such goals as: Community service/Volunteerism promotion; english language knowledge promotion and understanding of others nations culture; professional development, and other. Most events are annual, and they are known and recognized among Kazakhstani citizens.

One of the last events organized by our association were projects called We Are For A Beautiful City! and We Care!. The first one was ecological campaign, cleaning the main streets of one of the cities of Kazakhstan plus beautifying the streets by mounting the benches and trash cans along the streets. More than 100 people participated there from Almaty. We Care! project was a national antitobacco campaign that consisted of several stages: national antitobacco poster competition, seminars, debate tournaments and conferences at high schools promoting the bad influence of smoking, and auction called Drop Smoking! when citizens who were walking by the campaign could drop the cigarette box, and then to get a prize with Tshirt with logos of all sponsors and organizers of that event.

After collecting a huge amount of cigarette packs, participants burnt them. The other part of projects is related to charity events like giving concerts in elderly houses, collecting funds for assisting to orphanages, making trips to some entertainment places with orphans, etc. Such activities are usully held on some special events like New Year when alumni go watch movies with about 100 orphans, Thanksgiving Day and others. Members of Asociation do not forget about the resolution of youth issues in the country. Thus, up today it was responsible for numerous conferences and seminars by attracting specialists and professionals and bringing actual topics for discussion.

Ideas exchange always exists as a main source for well designed projects. So, as example, recently there was held a week training how to be successful in life for high school students of various villages through Kazakhstan. It consisted of series of workshops on job hunting, CV writing, interview skills and others.

Bright and unusual logos of the events, smart and active participants of the projects, briliant ideas are the things that make the activities of FLEX Alumni Association of Kazakhstan to be recognized in Kazakhstan. All events organized by members of FLEX Alumni Association of Kazakhstan make people being aware of existing issues in the country, bring everyones attention to it and encourage people actively participate in its resolution.

Such organizations as FLEX Alumni Association, in our opinion, shall assist to the development of the new liberal, democratic and prosperous way of living in the world. Since all events organized by FLEX Alumni Association of Kazakhstan aim to develop the civil society, lawful state, and stable democratic environment in Kazakhstan, we will try to continue our activity as sucessful as it is possible.

World Youth Peace Propagation Forum (WYPPF)

What we have done:

  1. 3 days Peace camp in Lumbini ( birth place of Buddha) Participating 130 person including Youth and adult.
  2. International essay context under the co-ordination of Goi Peace Foundation (Japan),Participant’s-250 student’s including 40 schools
  3. Peace tour of adult on the topic “SAVE CULTURE”.Participants - 90 Person
  4. Poem programme at kathmandu about pressfreedoom under Loesje International

What we are doing:

  • Peace camp of student in Lumbini on
  • Helding essay competion throughout the National level.
  • Helding conference selecting the student’s of every schools and college for creating awareness.

What we intend to do:

For students:

  • Conducting seminars and campaigns to raise feelings about peace , education, environment and social injustice.
  • Briefing about environmental degradation from experts.
  • Briefing for contribution toward peace stability from various experts.
  • Awaring them about discipline, education and behaviours,
  • Awaring about violation of rights, unnecessary hurricane, etc.
  • Awaring for healthy behaviour and reduce tendency to enter into drug addiction.

For local people:

  • Providing ideas about vocational trainings to develop skills .
  • Collective search of employment sources .
  • Assemble united effort and create pressure for generation of employment
  • Raise strong collective voice against corruption.
  • Aware about personal and social rights.
  • Provide informal education basically for the purpose of controlling girl trafficking , addiction behaviour, misuse of social authority.
  • Strong opposition against vandalism.
  • Collect local people and authorities to join hands together.

Nepal

There are contries in both Asia and Easter Europe involved in the project.

Nepal

Nepal is a South Asian landlocked country which lies between China and India. The landscape of Nepal varies from the icy Himalayas to the tropical forest in the Terai. Its culture carries 70 different ethnic groups speaking as many as 50 languages and dialects with their own distinct history, costume and culture. Major religion of Nepal is Hinduism and Buddhism.

Nepal ranks first in human right violation from both the state and insurgent. Major part of the population is affected by ongoing situation, both in rural and urban sectors. But still people are unaware of their fundamental rights and the means to achieve them Present scenario is drastic in case of Youth strength. Most of them are engaged in drug addiction led by frustration and unemployment, further boosted by social instability. Internal migration as refugee is increasing day by day. Children of schooling age have drawn to road. Quitting education, mostly at primary and secondary levels, is common.Technical and professional skills development programs is rare. All these aspects will certainly puts impact upon youth mentality.

Corruption has emerged as one of the major social crime. Power holders and top level authorities are themselves engaged in corruption. Local people do not exercise any right and authority to claim. Certain group of people are taking advantage of present status. Youth do not have access upon their destination as their qualification.

Improper education system, irregular schooling days and obstacles created from both the state and insurgent has put bad impact upon educational status of country. Children are missing their access to get proper formal education. Illiteracy is one of the draw back of society since long time. According to data available from local sources (apart from government source, which is not so reliable) more than half of the population still remains illiterate.

INGO and NGO operating at local level to boost educational status and informal education are being displaced due to hard time they have faced. Most of the country lies in hilly region where facility of transportation is still missing. People have to walk for many days to reach near by towns or district headquarters just to get their works done. Major population lies below the poverty line. They have to spend most of the time to join their hand and mouth. In such condition formal education seems very far from their access.

Nepal ranks very low in HDI index. Here economic development is in negative, and national income (NI) is also very low. Poverty is another difficult aspect for the society. Unemployment is so common that major portion of youth power is flying abroad, commonly in gulf countries, selling their strength in low cost. Most of the villages are empty with youth generation. Girl trafficking is so common in remote areas that parent themselves facilitate for the purpose. Here also poverty stands as major cause, next is illiteracy. Available data shows around 700 teenagers and girls were trafficked across the boarders last year (2005), fact figure maybe more.

All of the above listed problems arising finds it roots in poverty, illiteracy and divergence of youth power

Uzbekistan

Uzbekistan is a beautiful and fruitful land, which lies in the heart of Central Asia. It is the proud, unpredictable heir to Central Asia's richest inheritance with the legendary Silk Route cities of Samarkand, Khiva and Bukhara. The capital of Uzbekistan is Tashkent.

More than 60% of population comprise young people aged 15-24. Having a large share of young population in the country, it is not surprising that Government makes considerable investments in young people. The Government of Uzbekistan is carrying out a number of reforms aimed at providing youth with better access to education, health, labour market and social welfare.

According to the state youth policy, young people are identified as «citizens from 14-30 years old» and there are a number of programs and funds operating in Uzbekistan to support youth. There are two major youth organizations in the country. One of them is Kamolot (“maturity” from Uzbek) the largest youth movement with about 4,6 million young members.

The second is «Fund Forum of Culture and Arts of Uzbekistan» which has a big component that deal with youth issues and supports many large scale youth initiatives. In addition, many international organizations support youth volunteerism and various youth networks that are often related to help solving social issues in the country through small scale projects and peer-to-peer education and information campaigns. It is worthwhile to note the recent boom of youth wings in local political parties and an increasing number of NGOs led by young people.

What are the MDGs?

"The Millennium Development Goals were adopted five years ago by all the world's Governments as a blueprint for building a better world in the 21st century." Kofi Annan

The eight MDGs are:

  1. Eradicate extreme povery and hunger
  2. Achieve universal primary education
  3. Promote gender equality and empower women
  4. Reduce child mortality
  5. Improve maternal health
  6. Combat HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases
  7. Ensure environmental sustainability
  8. Develop a global partnership for development

The MDGs represent a global partnership that has grown from the commitments and targets established at the world summits of the 1990s. Responding to the world's main development challenges and to the calls of civil society, the MDGs promote poverty reduction, education, maternal health, gender equality, and aim at combating child mortality, AIDS and other diseases.

Set for the year 2015, the MDGs are an agreed set of goals that can be achieved if all actors work together and do their part. Poor countries have pledged to govern better, and invest in their people through health care and education. Rich countries have pledged to support them, through aid, debt relief, and fairer trade.

How is UNDP helping?

UNDP is working with a wide range of partners to help create coalitions for change to support the goals at global, regional and national levels, to benchmark progress towards them, and to help countries to build the institutional capacity, policies and programmes needed to achieve the MDGs.

Guided by the UN Core Strategy, UNDP's work on the MDGs focuses on coordinating global and local efforts that:

 

Further Reading