World Youth Congress

Over 600 young people attended the conference to discuss issues and advocate action on behalf of young people worldwide. Special attention was focused on Shoot Nations on International Youth Day 2008 (12 August) which fell in the middle of the conference.

The 4th WYC Congress celebrated youth and the role they play in achieving the Millennium Development Goals. The main principles of conference discussions were:

Empowerment

Through social and commercial entrepreneurship, and through devising and managing different types of community improvement projects, young people have shown that they can contribute directly to the sustainable development of their communities.

By empowering and mobilising thousands of young people throughout the world to aspire to complete hundreds of ambitious youth-led development projects, the World Youth Congress Quebec 2008 will shine a spotlight on the most effective ways that young people can advance the development agenda.

Contribution to achieving the MDGs

The young project managers who came to the Congress, and the youth-led development projects they displayed, provide compelling examples of how young people can help their governments achieve the Millennium Development Goals.

These goals, adopted by all UN member governments in the year 2000, mirror almost exactly the priorities agreed by the young delegates at the 1st World Youth Congress in Hawaii in 1999.

By stimulating and highlighting hundreds of youth-led development projects both before and after the Congress, the Canada 2008 World Youth Congress demonstrated the enormous contribution that young people make to the global effort to achieve the MDGs and increase the chances that the number of people living in extreme poverty will be halved by 2015.