The 4th October 2007 was IYPF´s sixth birthday. We launched our new
direction - a strategy for action till the end of 2009; a new look
and website; an online membership system that allows self-management
and greater interactivity and connections; and our strategy on
climate change. More recently we have seen young professionals around
the globe Stand Up Against Poverty and in the 4 weeks since our
birthday our membership has grown by 15%. Next year, our plans are to
convene our third international
Summit in Manchester (UK), triple our membership, expand our
information services, advance our Funds for member projects and
activities, and release a new member magazine.

It is an exciting time for IYPF and we need the brightest young
professionals to join our Board to lead the organisation as we grow
and transform over the next 2 years.

This is your opportunity to nominate.

At our Annual General Meeting in December, IYPF members will vote to
the Board three new directors for a two-year term. Chuma, Kate and
myself will be continuing in to the second year of our terms, so we
need at least thee new nominees. You can read more about our current
Board here http://www.iypf.org/about_board.htm.

The IYPF Board of Directors governs the organisation, determines
strategy and direction, and oversees its operations. The Board also
operates three working groups that involve IYPF staff, members and
external stakeholders on Strategy, Fundraising and Compliance. It is
expected that board members take oversight or provide a significant
contribution to one of IYPF´s operational areas.

Being a director will require 5 hours per week, regular e-mail
communication, and regular meetings via Internet. It is a significant
and rewarding commitment and those considering nomination should
consider their existing commitments. You can read more on the
position here: http://www.iypf.org/about_board.htm.

An appointment as a Director will be from the IYPF's AGM in December
2007 until the AGM in 2009. At that point, the person may choose to
nominate to be elected to the Board for a second term. .

If you are a self driven, passionate young professional and leading
the development of the IYPF over the next two years appeals to your
sense of purpose and adventure, please go here
http://www.iypf.org/about_board.htm. to download a nomination form
and submit your nomination via e-mail to IYPF CEO, Cameron Neil, on
cameronneil@iypf.org.

Nominations are due no later than Friday 16 November 2007.

If you are not already a member - a prerequisite for being a Director
- you can become a member online today via our website:
http://www.iypf.org/membership.htm.

For more information on the IYPF, see: http://www.iypf.org.

Yours sincerely

Gregory Nelson,
Director, IYPF

Go Project Kenya is a network of youth leaders in Kenya coming
together around a common understanding to create a youth voice. Our
Vision is of a country in which everybody- young and old alike-
realize their full potential and respect each other's rights and
uphold human dignity with a broader focus to create "a global social
justice".

Go Project Kenya provides the platform and assembly for building
contacts among youth leaders and activists, information sharing,
capacity building, solidarity, research on best practices of public
policy formulations directed to the plight of youth and activities on
socio-economic and political transformation and general advocacy
work.

For this to be achieved, we strongly believe that the voices of many
young people in Kenya need to be heard at all levels of the society-
at the family, community, organization, public policy formulation
levels- and even most important, youth concerns incorporated in all
decisions that affect their lives fundamentally.

Go Project Kenya is focused in the fields of education for
sustainable development, environmental issues and ecology, health
promotion, human rights and advocacy work, community development,
youth related issues and empowerment and general societal issues
under a broad context- sustainable development.

For further information, please contact the Go Project Kenya's
Executive Director, Jeremiah Otieno via jerry73us@yahoo.com.

By Kate Plant, Director

I am sitting breast-feeding my son early on this 10 August 2007, he
is now 7 weeks old and has already grown so much. Each day I ponder
whether I'm teaching him the right things and what a mammoth but
enjoyable task it will be to teach him about the world and its
intricacies.

In pondering such things, I begin to think about how I would explain
peace and poverty to him. That age old problem that affects from the
poorest to the richest nations, at varying degrees. I think I'd
start with a definition of Peace.Wikipedia describes peace as a
"state of harmony http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harmony, the absence
of hostility. This term is applied to describe a cessation of violent
international conflict; in this international context, peace is the
opposite of war http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War, Peace can also
describe a relationship between any parties characterized by respect
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Respect, justice
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Justice, and goodwill
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodwill, More generally, peace can
pertain to an individual relative to her or his environment, as
peaceful http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peaceful, can describe calm,
serenity, and silence."

I'd then move onto a definition of poverty. A commonly used
definition was produced by the European Union (1984) and defines it
as "the situation of people whose 'resources (material, social and
cultural) are so limited as to exclude them from the minimum
acceptable way of life in the countries in which they live'. For
practical purposes, it is usually interpreted as 'those whose incomes
fall below half of the average income (as measured by the median) for
the nation in which they live'. In other words it is a measure of
relative poverty."

Once he's old enough to talk, I can see him asking numerous relevant
questions including 'Mum, what causes war/peace and poverty to exist?
Why does it still exist, especially when the human race has at many
stages of its evolution, tried to solve it?"

To this I would respond, 'Great question my son, there are many
reasons war and the fight for peace exists including human's
differences of opinions, societies need to increase its wealth, and
maybe even the 'use/miss-use' of a countries natural resources and
other environmental factors. Meanwhile poverty maybe caused by the
equality of opportunity that has long been a key concern of
governments and society.'

'As far as why it still exists. There have been numerous attempts to
indoctrinate the attitude of achieving peace and alleviating poverty,
by most governments around the world (both developed and
underdeveloped nations). Most recently on an international level,
the Millennium Development Goals (MDG's) are a set of key goals that
our world's Governments adopted 5 years ago to look toward building a
better world. These goals symbolized partnerships and opportunities
to respond to this world's challenges and to begin to meet the calls
for positive change by our society for 2015. The MDG's are focused
on promoting poverty reduction, education, maternal health, gender
equality, and combating child mortality, AIDS and other diseases. As
part of reaching these MDG's, poor countries have "pledged to govern
better and invest in their people through health care and education".
Also, "rich countries have pledged to support them, through aid,
debt relief, and fairer trade." [www.undp.org/mdg; accessed 10 August
2007]

So son, this is a big world and everybody has varying agenda´s that
often conflicts with our world's natural and built operations. The
MDG's are just one method for man to change our past actions and an
opportunity to build a world of healthy binding actions for our
future generations.'

"So Mum, what can I and each of us do to bring enduring and genuine
peace and alleviate poverty to our world?"

I would in turn suggest he continues EACH DAY to act responsibly and
with each task/activity/event/job he undertakes to look at how he
could be kinder to each person he comes in contact with, enjoy
solving problems and conflicts through open fair discussion and
negotiation, build strong ties and foster cross-cultural
understanding with the people of other countries, understand everyone
is unique yet together these differences build a better 'whole', vote
for peace, use our world's resources sustainably, recycle and reuse
these resources at every opportunity and be fair and equitable in
every action he takes. But I'd also stress, that it's not enough for
him just to embark on this conscious lifetime without empowering
others to make a similar pact with themselves and future generations.

Enjoy each day to its fullest, as there will be no other like it!

By Cameron Neil, Founding CEO

Seeing IYPF celebrate its 6th birthday is certainly a significant
milestone for me. When I started out with IYPF back in 2001, I really
had no idea of the journey it would take me on nor where 6 years down
the track would find me or indeed the organisation!

Reflecting back over the last 6 years, being involved with IYPF has
been a very rewarding adventure for me. I have learnt so much and had
the pleasure of working alongside inspiring and amazing pers.
Personal benefit aside, I can see that the organisation has achieved
some pretty significant things and helped catalyse the emergence of
the `young professional´ category in various local and global for a
worldwide, not least of which in the international development
sector. Our members - including many who have been directors and/or
staff - have and are making amazing contributions to creating a
better future for current and future generations. The organisation
has grown organically, spreading its tentacles through over 100
countries and to embrace over 3000 young professionals.

Despite this, both IYPF and me have become restless over the last 12
to 18 months. We wanted more. We saw so much potential for what IYPF
could be, how it could better achieve its vision and mission. How
IYPF could grow and strengthen its activities, operations and
networks and better inform, inspire and equip even more young
professionals to take local and global action to transform our world
for the better.

So, mostly quietly, we have been working to implement a program of
activities and initiatives to transform and grow IYPF from its humble
beginnings to an even more useful vehicle for achieving social change
through engaging and supporting young professionals.

Today, our 6th birthday, we thought it was a good time to start to
share what we´ve been working on. Most of these initiatives are
`works in progress´ that we believe, with your engagement and
involvement, can see IYPF become a very different organisation in 5
years time. I´m not 100% sure what it will look like exactly - and I
will be handing the reigns over to someone else to lead the
organisation towards that exciting future in the next 12 months.
However, I know that I´m excited and I believe that the initiatives
we have put in place will lead us all on an exciting adventure over
the next 6 years.

These new initiatives, outlined briefly below, are also detailed on a
special new splash page we´ve put on our website to highlight what we
are up to. As these activities progress, we´ll keep you posted
through the website and the newsletter. If you want more information,
or to get involved, please do not hesitate to contact me on
cameronneil@iypf.org.

Yours in service,
Cameron

IYPF Initiatives & Activities

· A new look, more professional, still undergoing transformation
website @ www.iypf.org
· A new online membership application and management platform that
allows members to manage their own membership, engagement with IYPF,
connection with other members, etc.
· A strategic plan for 2007 to 2009 that we´ve already started to
implement, which we will also be using to create a strong business
plan and to drive further transformation and growth of the
organisation
· An IYPF Climate Change Strategy that commits us to operating in
ways to reduce our own carbon impact while engaging with our
stakeholders to help reduce theirs
· A new volunteer recruitment and development program is being
finalised that will provide more opportunities for people interested
in developing their skills and contributing to IYPF
· Stand Up Against Poverty, October 17 2007, as part of doing more to
facilitate local networks of young professionals to take action on
local issues (another round of events in February)
· IYPS 2008, which will be our next major milestone for new
initiatives, activities and announcements
· The creation and operation of various member funds to invest in
their amazing initiatives

Indigenous Peoples have long campaigned for recognition of their
unique place in the world. Now, after 25 years, their basic rights
have been agreed with the acceptance of the Declaration on the Rights
of Indigenous Peoples by the UN General Assembly on 13 September.

Most of the world's remaining natural resources - including minerals,
fresh water and potential energy sources - are to be found within
Indigenous Peoples´ territories. For the first time, this
declaration provides internationally accepted standards for
Indigenous Peoples; giving them a say in regard to the use and
protection of resources over which they have traditionally been
custodians.

In adopting this non-binding declaration protecting the human, land
and resource rights of the world´s 370 million Indigenous people, 143
countries voted in favour. Sadly, four countries voted against;
Canada, New Zealand, the United States and Australia.

For more information see
www.ohchr.org/english/issues/indigenous/declaration.htm and
www.iwgia.org/sw248.asp.