São Paulo – Youths from 52 countries, among them four Arab nations, will attend a conference on environment in Brazil in June. According to information supplied by the Brazilian ministries of Education and Environment, responsible for the initiative, the meeting should congregate 400 adolescents aged 12 to 15. The International Youth Conference – Let’s take care of the Planet will take place in the city of Luziânia, in the state of Goiás, from June 5 to 10.
The Arab countries will be represented by Qatar, Egypt, Yemen and Palestine. According to the organizers, in addition to discussing the environment, after the meeting the youths will be entrusted with the mission of requesting their governments to adopt policies for protecting climate and the planet. The event was already held, on a national level, in 2003, 2006 and 2009, involving 13 million youths from 20,000 Brazilian schools. Now the government has decided to make it international.
The project is part of the Decade of Education for Sustainable Development, promoted by the United Nations for the 2005-2014 period. The conference’s objective is to have adolescents take charge, on the local sphere, of global commitments, and assume the responsibility of building sustainable societies, creating a network of caring for the planet.
Participants will learn to use means of communication to convey their message, attend environment-related cultural activities and workshops on social-environmental changes worldwide. During the activities, they will elaborate the meeting’s final statement – the Letter of Responsibilities – Let’s take care of the Planet –, in which responsibilities will be assumed for local and global actions.
*Translated by Gabriel Pomerancblum
