Dear friends and colleagues

You might remember that earlier in the year there was an opportunity
to submit your views on the UN Secretary-General's "In Larger
Freedoms" report, which dealt with how to reform the UN to make it
more effective in the modern world and to help achieve the Millennium
Development Goals.

In addition, there has been a number of key reports, such as the
Millennium Project Report "Investing In Development" on how to
achieve the MDGs and also the "A More Secure World" report from the
High-Level Panel on Security.

All of these documents are converging on the Millennium + 5 Summit
being held in September this year. This meeting will be a milestone
event for the achievement of a better world for current and future
generations.

TakingITGlobal and the Global Youth Action Network, IYPF partners and
co-organisational supporters of the Youth & MDGs paper that IYPF was
heavily involved in, are leading efforts to ensure input from youth
and young professionals in to the M+5 Summit and the outcome text, as
per the e-mail below.

I strongly encourage you to take this opportunity to have your input
to this important event!

Key dates from the below or June 19th and July 1st. There are likely
to be further opportunities later as well - however, this first round
is very important.

In addition to sending your inputs to Vidar and Franziska, I
encourage you to communicate your thoughts with your national
government, as it will be the UN Member States - the governments -
who decide the final event outcomes. Advocating to them the
importance of youth and young professional involvement in the MDGs
and the UN is vital.

You might like to use the Youth & MDG report that the IYPF helped
write as an advocacy tool, reference point, and source of information
as well. You can read more about that and dowload the report from
http://www.iypf.org/IYPF-projects.htm#YMDGs.

The document referred to by Vidar and Franziska is availabe from the IYPF website at the following link: http://www.iypf.org/IYPF-projects.htm#YMDGs.

You can also send your input on the M+5 event to us here at IYPF. We
will be able to use them in future newsletters and our soon-to-be-
launched Young Professionals and MDGs online community.

Towards a better world for all

Cameron


+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Hey everyone,

As you might know, 2005 is an extremely important year for the UN and
the implementation of the Millennium Development Goals. There is a
big summit at the UN in September, where all Heads of State will meet
to review the progress on the MDGs and suggestions to reform the UN.
The discussion will largely be based on the Secretary-General Report
"In Larger Freedom", but also the recommendations put forth in the
Millennium Project Report "Investing in Development" and the report
from the high-level panel on security: "A more secure world".

Even though the summit is in September, the negotiations have already
started. On June 3rd a draft text of the outcome document from the
summit was released, and this text is now being circulated among
member states so they can provide their comments and inputs. This is
also a chance for civil society to provide inputs to the negotiations
through meeting with member states or UN officials. The negotiations
happening right now and the next couple of months will do much to
determine the outcome of the M+5 summit in September.

Therefore, we want to make sure that young people get a chance to
provide their opinions in that process. The best way to provide input
is to make concrete proposals for changes and additions in the
language of the draft text, so that it can be put directly into the
outcome document from the summit.

We want to compile a list of youth contributions that we can submit
to member states during the negotiations, to ensure that as many
young people as possible get to voice their opinions. If you want to
contribute, please review the draft text and see what you think is
missing or what should be changed. The document contains virtually no
reference to young people, so there are many places where a youth
input will be very important. For example, if you think there should
be a paragraph about what young people can do to fight HIV/AIDS, you
could suggest a paragraph on youth involvement that could be added to
the draft text.

We would appreciate if any submissions could be sent to us by Sunday
June 19th. We realize this is a short deadline, but we would like to
have some youth input ready for the Civil Society Hearings on June
23rd and 24th. These Hearings will bring together a lot of people
from civil society with government delegates, so it represents a
great opportunity to present our views.

If the deadline is too short, we ask you kindly to send us your
contributions by Friday July 1st. This will still give us a chance to
submit youth opinions to member states before the 2nd draft text is
released on July 15th (when the process of inputs and negotiations
starts over again).

Please note that the input we get will not be used to represent any
organizations or claim to be representative of all youth voices - it
will simply be circulated as a compilation of youth opinions.

Please send your inputs or any follow-up questions to Vidar Ekehaug
at vidar@youthlink.org or to Franziska Seel at
Franziska@takingitglobal.org.

Best regards,

Vidar and Franziska