2009 UN Youth Assembly

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Be a fan of acceptance, dignity, and the human race.
Special Olympics Project UNIFY
6th Annual Youth Assembly
at the United Nations
New York, United States of America
August 2009
http://www.faf.org/unyouthassembly/program.htm
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Project UNIFY representatives (from bottom left):
Joelle (NY), Jenny (KS),
Joy (Lebanon), Maya (Lebanon), Morgan (KS), Jonathon (NY)
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“Education is the most powerful weapon that you can use to change the world.” – Nelson Mandela

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The main discussions at the assembly were the eight Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) which are:
1) Eradicating extreme poverty and hunger,
2) Achieving universal primary education,
3) Promoting gender equality and empowering women,
4) Reducing child mortality,
5) Improving maternal health,
6) Combating HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases,
7) Ensuring environment sustainability, and
8) Developing a global partnership for development.
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As you can see none of those goals are directly connected to our main concern. Therefore we deepened our thoughts and research and found out that in fact they are very much related to us; Special Olympics.
Sitting there and listening to all those discussions really moved us towards wanting to obtain as much information as we can so that we can find ways to connect to them to Special Olympics.
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List of UN Priorities:
Education
EmploymentHunger and Poverty
Health
Environment
Substance Abuse
Juvenile Justice
Leisure
Girls & young Women
Participation
Globalization
HIV/AIDS
Armed Conflict
ICT
International Issues
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On the previous slide is the list of the priorities that they have set. We were bothered that the human rights of people with intellectual disabilities was not on the list. So therefore Morgan asked a question asking why it isn’t. That is when we were approached by Ms. AbayneshAsrat who recommended that we write up a petition demanding our priority to be there.
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The two questions we asked (Joy + Morgan)

Joy: We have been discussing major topics such as health, poverty, hunger and all those are defiantly very important. Its just we are here representing Special Olympics and we were wondering if you see a place in the MDG’s discussion to discuss the rights of people with intellectual disabilities?
Morgan: (Jenny should have the word for word question,

but it was about having the rights
of people with intellectual
disabilities on the list of priorities.)
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Petition
United Nations Programme on Youth Petition: To add the issue of human rights for people with intellectual disabilities on the 15 item agenda.
we will follow up at our college
campuses
Ms. AbayneshAsrat (She
recommended we right up the petition) Founder, President & CEO, Nation to Nation Networking
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Workshop/Roundtable Programs we attended ( we split into small groups to be able to attend them all)

Roots and Shoots: The Power of Youth is Global
Think tank: Education and Youth Initiatives
Children International: Children International Youth Leadership Training
UNICEF: Unite for Climate: How Social Networking Can Support Your Work
Friendship Ambassadors Foundation (FAF): Millennium Development Goals and Youth Leadership
The World Bank: Education – Beating Poverty Through Books and Blogs
UN Programme on Youth (UNPY): Youth Development Goals: Making the Link
United Nations Population Fund: Youth as leaders in sports and play
International Youth Council: YAUN and You: Directing Your Passion into Action

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Our lunch meeting with Liza Barrie from UNICEF
The first day we arrived we got a call from UNICEF informing us that Ms. Liza Barrie wants to meet with us over lunch. So we met on Friday over lunch at the UN cafeteria. She asked us questions such as why are we at the YA? What is our main concern? How can we relate this to SO?... And she also asked us general personal questions such as which colleges we go to? What are we majoring in? When did we get started with SO? Why? How? What have we done with SO? What our next steps are...
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“Education is POWER. It has been said that educational inequality is the greatest social justice issue of our time.”
Potential contacts:

BothaniaQamar

Special Youth Program Fellow United Nations Population Fund
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ParalympicsAthlete-Hou Bin!!!!
A great contact to us due to having the same interest, Jenny was able to converse with him in Chinese; she should be able to let us know what they talked about. Things such as what he has done NGO wise.
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Tim Morehouse
Beijing Olympics, silver medallist in Men's Sabre Fencing.
(Was very interested in our cause, since Joy’s question was directed to him)
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Korean Disability support group
(partner up with them?)
While at the Youth Assembly we met with a wonderful group of Korean youth who were there with almost the same goal as ours. They were there representing their organization.
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Campaign night
One of the special night/dinner events
was Campaign night. That was were
several organizations had their table
stands where people could pass by
their table and find out about their
organization and find out what they do and how they could become involved with them. This is where our lovely J sister Jenny hooked us up with the Three Word Video that Noah had sent us and we started inviting people to our stand; being our laptops on our laps  and showed it to them. We got great reactions from really interested people.
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UN Radio
While having lunch one of the days, a reporter from UN Radio approached us and asked us if we minded being interviewed. We obviously said that we would love to! He
then asked us for our names,
where we’re from, whom we
represent, and which MDG we
are here to support most.
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“Almost every problem can be solved through the education of our children and generations to come.”
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