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GEYC & Caretakers, we are on our way

On Saturday the 29th of June, delegations from all over the world arrived in Italy for the 2002 Global Environmental Youth Convention. As the students and teachers began to check-in at the campus of Turin Polithecnic (COREP), they already began to meet and communicate with new friends. Everyone was quite well prepared for the opening day. The Portuguese delegates were wearing T-shirts to describe their project theme - life in Cacém, their home town. The Swedish delegation, which is quite a big one with 12 participants, wore T-shirts with GEYC symbols and Swedish national flags. The participants from different corners of the world had similar expectations for the convention. In such a multicultural event, they have said they would like to share their own experiences, to gain more knowledge about environmental science and sustainable development, to meet people, to make friends, and to learn about different cultures. The Dominican Republic delegation said they want to enrich their knowledge and to do better work for their country after the conference. The Austrian delegation arrived expecting to make new connections with other people, to make good presentations in workshops and to get a new point of view. A girl from South Africa added that people also came to find out about different problems in countries other than their own. Delegates had a guided tour of Turin before heading to Pracatinat in the Italian Alps, where the conference is taking place. Everybody seems to think that Turin is quite a fine place, with a great atmosphere of history and modernity. They are glad to visit the city, and some will do a deeper excursion after the conference.GEYC & Caretakers, we are on our way. Everybody, good luck! 

Di Zhang, P.R. China

Students from 50 countries gathered at the COREP yard.

Natural Park: a glimpse of the past 

When the participants of the Convention gathered near the Pracatinat building and started to climb the hill they hardly new that on the ground under their feet was an ancient settlement since the bronze age. They hardly new that this ground remember cruel fights between Catholics and Valdesi, between the French army and the duke of Savoi. They hardly knew that the place itself was called after the French general Catinat whose army put on tents in the fields called "pra" in the suburbs and that the duke of Savoi after the victory on French army decided to built among the mountains Fort Le Fenestrelle, on of the biggest in the world. They hardly new that this very fort was used as accommodation for many important persons, was a military jail and a political prison even after the downfall of Napoleon, was used as a concentrated camp, was turned into an artillery ammunition deport and was subsequently abandoned after the Second World War. But during the climbing the participants breathed the air of these far away events, heard the birds singing the same songs as the birds sang lots of years ago, and even catched the sound of bells ringing on the necks of sheeps which draw reptiles away from them and prevent the animals from their poison. And these together with the theoretic information helped them to feel something important, something they will remember for long. The Fort Le Fenestrelle which isn't a single building but a series of redoubts and blockhouses connected together with magnificent stairway if 4000 steps will be the host of the Earth Ceremony which is going to take place tomorrow on the 2nd of July and will probably open some other amazing, exciting and frightening secrets to the participants from all over the world. Tomorrow will show… 

Dr. Arjen Wals, President of CEI, Prof. Luisa Viglietta, and Prof. Salvatore Coluccia, President of COREP, during the opening and welcome ceremony at COREP June 29, 2002.

"Dream for a better world and be determined in making those dreams come true," said Prof. Luisa Viglietta, the 2nd GEYC and 16th Caretakers Conference organizer. Read Luisa's reflections on the next page!

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Global Youth Reporters meet again for the third time!

Hjalmar (Sweden), Di (P.R. China) , Nadja (Russia) and Mirza (Bosnia-Herzegovina).

The Global Youth Reporters Programme (GYRP) was first initiated in Lund, Sweden, at the Global Environmental Youth Convention (GEYC) year 2000. The project was started by IUCN - The World Conservation Union together with the Reuters Foundation, Sony International (Europe), Canadian television producers Via Le Monde and the International Institute for Industrial Environmental Economics. Selected from more than 400 students, the fifteen chosen reporters from all around the world were trained in basic journalism skills by members of the Reuters Foundation. All through the convention the reporters set out to write articles about the different events taking place there. The follow-ups have been the coverage of IUCN's World Conservation Congress in Jordan 2000, the UNEP Youth Conference on Environment and Sustainable Development in Sweden 2001 and the UNEP Global Youth Forum 2002 in Denmark. This programme will continue!!! 

Hjalmar Nordén        

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