The United Nations’ International Youth Day is celebrated every year on August 12, honoring the energy, proactive attitudes, and determination of the young people who strengthen mutual understanding between differing groups and initiate an environment for solving the challenges of the 21st century.
“Young people are not only our future — they are our present. Our planet has never been so young, with 1.8 billion young women and men. They are the most connected, the most outspoken and the most open-minded generation the world has ever seen”, highlights UNESCO Director-General Irina Bokova in her Message on the occasion of the holiday.
UNESCO sees young people as full-fledged participants in the global dialogue and powerful agents of positive change. Therefore, the Organization works in close cooperation with youth civic movements and associations on matters identified as a priority for UNESCO.
Just two weeks before the International Youth Day, a Youth camp for young leaders and activists of UNESCO clubs was held in Gorno-Altaysk from 18 to 28 of July 2016 by the Ural-Siberian Federation of UNESCO clubs, centers and associations. Through the work of such clubs young people become more familiar with the main goals and values of UN and UNESCO in general and get an opportunity to solve concrete tasks in practice, thus contributing to the development of their local communities and unlocking their creative potential.
UNESCO Institute for Information Technologies in Education supported the Youth camp’s activities at the premises of the UNESCO Associated School – Republican gymnasium of V.K. Plakas (Republic of Altay). Yulia Plakhutina, project manager for HIV prevention and health education, introduced camp participants to the IITE major fields of work as well as shared UNESCO’s experience on campaign-building and implementation of preventive education programs for youth and adolescents. In this regard, Yulia delivered two workshops on reproductive health and HIV prevention where young leaders explored successful examples of media campaigns and came up with their own ideas.
In the course of workshops, camp participants got acquainted with the materials of a video-lesson jointly developed by IITE UNESCO and UNAIDS, featuring Vera Brezhneva, UNAIDS Goodwill Ambassador for Eastern Europe and Central Asia. This short videoclip is intended for use as a part of extracurricular lesson plan on HIV prevention and development of a healthy, safer lifestyle among adolescents. The Youth Camp’s participants spoke positively of the video’s content and format, with a special emphasis on its informational value and easy-to-understand style of presenting key messages.
Lesson materials and teaching aids are available for download under the following links:
- Informational video featuring Vera Brezhneva, UNAIDS Goodwill Ambassador for Eastern Europe and Central Asia (Download, 150 MB)
- Guidelines on conducting an extracurricular lesson on HIV prevention (available in Russian only, 1MB)