After long time I went through the website www.scout.org, world scout’s official website where I read the latest news on "Red Card to Child Labour". Soon after, I glanced on the report of  9^th World Scout Youth Forum was held at Hammament, Tunisia from 29 August to 1 September 2005. It was the fourth forum linked to the World Scout Conference. A long report, I guess its beyond my capacity to understand what World Scout Organization is going to do to achieve Millennium Development Goals(MDGs). However, I believe the following part would fruitful for all us.

The World Scout Youth Forum offered young people the opportunity to discuss and express their views on subjects of interest to them, in their global, national and local realities. They prepared recommendations for the World Scout Committee.
The main topics dicussed on the forum were:
- Challenges for young global citizens: Global issues and the UN’s Millennium Development Goals; what can we do as Scouts?
- Challenges in young peoples’ lives: Discussing the main challenges that young people meet in their personal lives today in the various parts of the world, and what support they need to overcome difficulties
- Challenges in Scouting: Items from the agenda of the World Scout Conference; The Strategic Priorities; Development of Youth Involvement in WOSM.
 
Challenges for young global citizens and Millennium Development Campaign

Recognizing the importance of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and various memoranda of understanding between WOSM and the UN System, one of the sessions of the World Scout Youth Forum focused on the synergy between the MDGs and our capacity in Scouting to play a significant part in realising those goals.
 
What are Millennium Development Goals (MDGs)?
The eight millennium Development Goals range from halving extreme poverty to halting the spread of HIV/AIDS and providing universal primary education-all by the target date of 2015. a blueprint agreed by all the world’s countries and all the world’s leading development institutions- a set of simple but powerful objectives that every man and woman in the street, from New York to Nairobi  to New Delhi, can easily support and understand. They have galvanized unprecedented efforts to meet the needs of the world’s poorest(United Nations Secretary-General,Kofi A. Annan).

The goals are eradicate extreme poverty and hunger, achieve universal primary education, promote gender equality and empower woman, reduce child mortality, improve maternal health, combat HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases, ensure environmental sustainability and develop a global partnership for development. Mr Amil Hussain, Global Youth Co-coordinator of the United Nations Millennium Campaign explained on details on MDGS and motivated the Forum participants to take an active role in ensuring that we don’t want tosee another generation die as a result of poverty.
 
With strong guidance from the expert members of staff from UNICEF, Tunisia the participants came up with various recommendations on each goals.
 
1. Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger
 
· Halve, between 1990 and 2005, the proportion of people whose income is less than one dollar a day.
· Halve, between 1990 and 2005, the proportion of people who suffer from hunger.
 
The group considered actions that are already being undertaken in Scouting to reduce poverty, hunger and their root causes and developed ideas for new approaches. The group identified partnerships between NSOs in developed and developing countries and the necessity of young people need to be called to action and take part in the decision making processes, in addition, a scout aid organization channeling money from developed countries to scout projects in developing countries was noted.
 
2. Achieve universal primary education
· Ensure that, by 2015, children everywhere, boys and girls alike, will be able to complete a full course of primary schooling
 
Acknowledging that more than 113 million children are denied access to primary education and that more than 150 million people have never completed it, the working group explored what steps Scouting could practically take at local and national level to develop universal primary education and strategies to ensure that communities understand the benefit that it has. To achieve universal primary education the group suggested the project based ideas like a book, computer and educational software donation campaign, “Tree Schools”-setting up basic education facilities in rural areas with the help from volunteers and create child friendly school environment was put.
 
3. Promote gender equality and empower women
· Eliminate gender disparity in primary and secondary education, preferably by 2005, and to all levels of education no later than 2015.
 
This working group recognized that the empowerment of women can be related to all of the MDGs, discussed positive discrimination, stereotypical roles of both sexes, the interrelationship between gender equality and poverty, under representation of women in political processes. Further, the working group also appreciated that young men have a responsibility to assist in developing a culture of gender equality. The ideas like building an international gender equality discussion network, appointing in charge in NSOs to focus on genders equality, co-operate with WAGGGS and other partners in the development of training materials for us in NSOs were idenidentified.
 
4. Reduce child mortality
· Reduce by two-thirds, between 1990 and 2015, the under-five mortality rate.
 
5. Improve maternal health
· Reduce by three-quarters, between 1990 and 2015, the maternal mortality ratio.
 
Infant mortality and maternal health constitute serious problems in many developing countries. Every year 11 million children die before the age of five. In Africa there are more than 1000 maternal deaths per 100,000 births; a total of 600,000 deaths per year. The working group identified a number of issues that need to be addressed, including immunization, sanitation, sex-education and malnutrition and awareness programmes for reducing child mortality and improving maternal health.
 
6. HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases
· Have halted by 2015 and begun to reverse the spread of HIV/AIDS.
· Have halted by 2015 and begun to reverse the incidence of malaria and other major diseases.
 
Acknowledging that every day 6000 young people become infected with HIV, and that AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria combined kill over 6 million people each year, the working group discussed projects undertaken by Scouts that address these problems.
The formation of Mobile Information Center (MIC) to bridge the information gap between urban and rural areas, where access to accurate media can vary enormously, Scouts could run a mobile information center, perhaps with internet access capability as well as a library of freely distributable printed matters can make a remarkable difference in achieving MDGs. Similarly, Scouting should involve more in the World AIDS Day particularly orgnising youth programmes where scout could have the opportunity to use the Scout method to get things done. NSOs can create scholarships to help young women and men considering alternatives from prostitution.
 
7. Ensure environmental sustainability
·  Integrate the principles of sustainable development into country policies and programs and reverse the loss of environmental resources.
· Halve, by 2015, the proportion of people without sustainable access to safe drinking water.
· By 2020, to have achieved a significant improvement in the lives of at least 100 million slum dwellers.
 
Forests are disappearing at unprecedented rates globally, over 2.4 billion people lack access to proper sanitation facilities and one billion lack access to drinkable water, and recognising the important role young people can play in attaining environmental sustainability, the group went on to develop a number of practical ideas.
Two of the project based ideas that the  group come up with were the involvement of young people in conservation projects and promote environmental education, through Scouting, and Increase awareness of the memorandum WOSM has signed with the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) to promote education to sustainable development.
 
8. Develop a global partnership for development
· Develop further an open trading and financial system that is rule-based, predictable and nondiscriminatory.
Includes a commitment to good governance, development and poverty reduction—nationally and internationally.
 
Address the least developed countries’ special needs. This includes tariff- and quota -free access for their exports, enhanced debt relief for heavily indebted poor countries, cancellation of official bilateral debt; and more generous official development assistance for countries committed to poverty reduction. Address the special needs of landlocked and Small Island developing states. Deal comprehensively with developing countries’ debt problems through national and international measures to make debt sustainable in the long term.
 
In cooperation with the developing countries, develop decent and productive work for youth and in cooperation with pharmaceutical companies, provide access to affordable essential drugs in developing countries; furthermore, in cooperation with the private sector, make available the benefits of new technologies—especially information and communications technologies.
 
Goal number 8 of the millennium development goals is mainly intended for the consideration of developed countries, recognizing that none of the goals can be achieved without the assistance and resources of these countries. The group discussed how to develop an even playing field for countries in the area of trade, youth employment, information and communications technology and global partnerships.
 
9. Scouts of the World Programme

To support the implementation above all 8 MDGs participants suggested to promote the sharing of other’s experience with Scouts of the World – so NSOs can learn from each other, to encourage NSOs to implement the programme through the regional offices and in direct contact with the NSOs and to provide relevant resources to NSOs to help them implement the programme.

 (In this issue I have summarized on Challenges for young global citizens: Global issues and the UN’s Millennium Development Goals; what can we do as Scouts?)