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Want a Better World?
	Spread the Word About Global Youth Service Day!
		April 20 – 22, 2008

Be the change maker

Join in: India Lead Agency, People’s Institute for Development and Training,
A-12 Paryavaran Complex, Saket-Maidangarhi Road, New Delhi-110030
E-mail: pidt@del6.vsnl.net.in;pidt2007@gmail.com
Phone: 011-29532408 / 29531282 / 29531296

Global Youth Service Day (GYSD) – Youth Changing the World
Global Youth Service Day (GYSD) the largest service event in the world, mobilizes youth to identify and address the needs of their communities through service and learning, supports youth on a lifelong path of service and civic engagement, and educates the public, media, and policymakers about the year-round contributions of young people as community leaders.

GYSD is an annual global event that engages millions of youth in service projects in over 150 countries. The programme is about youth leading through service, strengthening organisations’ ability to engage the younger generations, and promoting young people as assets and resources.

Global Youth Service Day, a programme of Youth Service America with the National Youth Leadership Council (NYCL) and PARADE Magazine, spotlights the amazing energy, commitment, idealism, and creativity of young people, illustrating the incredible contributions they make 365 days of the year mobilizes them to identify and address the needs of their communities through service and recruits the next generation of volunteers.

What Are The Goals Of Global Youth Service Day?

Global Youth Service Day has three primary goals:

MOBILIZE
Youth as leaders to identify and address the needs of their communities through service and learning.

SUPPORT
Youth on a lifelong path of service and civic engagement; and

EDUCATE
The public, the media, and policymakers about the year-round contributions of young people as community leaders.

Who Participates in GYSD?
Over the past 18 years, Global Youth Service Day has brought together more than 34 million people in thousands of communities in the USA alone. In 2000, the program expanded to include youth projects in 27 countries for the first annual Global Youth Service Day. In 2006, 118 countries participated.

Global Youth Service Day is an opportunity to ask the community to come together, to go beyond the usual networks and associations and to forge powerful new relationships.

Global Youth Service Day projects address a wide variety of issues, including hunger and homelessness, the environment, health and nutrition, public safety, tutoring and mentoring, and many other areas.

What Happens on GYSD?
Global Youth Service Day is a year-round effort to expand the impact of the service movement. On April 20-22, 2007, youth – in partnership with families, schools, businesses, community organization, and faith-based groups – will lead activities that improve their care, communities. Projects range from literacy, disaster relief, and environment to health nutrition, and help for senior citizens. Millions of young people are introduced to volunteering on GYSD, and are inspired to begin a lifetime of service and service-learning. Youth are recognized for their year-round contributions. Finally, GYSD launches new organizations, policy changes, and sustainable service programs to create a culture of engaged youth.

Introduction to Service-Learning
Service-Learning is an innovative teaching method that combines meaningful service with curriculum or programme-based learning. Schools and organizations may advantageously use it as a tool to help youth build stronger academic skills, foster civic responsibility, and develop leadership skills. The components of this teaching practice include youth voice, curricular connection, addressing a genuine community need, and follow four stages- Preparation, action, reflection, and celebration.

What is Service-Learning?
Service-learning is “learning by doing.” Educating children in a neighbourhood slum is service. Conducting a survey on pathetic rate of literacy around your self is learning. When a local education authority uses the findings to plan an education project, is service-learning.

Incorporating “Youth Voice”
Youth Voice refers to the engagement of young people as leaders and decision-makers in projects, programmes, and organizations. In context of service-learning, Youth voice is the input young people provide in developing and implementing projects, plans, and policies to guide service-learning efforts. Incorporation of youth voice, which is essential from the initiation of the project, gives young people a sense of ownership, cultivates pride, and ensures equality amongst adult counterparts- essential ingredients when looking to thoroughly engage the involvement of youth in service. Youth voice has a tremendous impact on programme participation, community involvement, and civic engagement.

GYSD and Millennium Development Goals (MDGs)
What can you do to help accomplish the eight MDGs? Do some research on what each goal is trying to accomplish. Talk to young people and adults about what you can do to help. Make a plan, work toward your own goals, and then take time to reflect on what you have achieved.

Goal 1: Eradicate Extreme Poverty
India must reduce by 2015 the proportion of people below poverty line from nearly 37.5% in 1990 to about 18.75%. As on 1999-2000, the poverty headcount ratio was 26.1% with poverty gap ratio of 5.2%, the figure in 2004-2005 was further declined to 21.8%, which means 238.5 million Indians (170.3 million in rural and 68.2 million in urban areas) are still living in poverty. Share of poorest quintile in national consumption was 10.1% for rural sector and 7.9% for urban sector and prevalence of underweight children is of the order of 47%.

Goal 2: Provide Universal Primary Education
India should increase the primary school enrolment rate to 100% and wipe out the drop-outs by 2015 against 41.96% in 1991-92. The drop-out rate for primary education during 2002-03 is 34.89%. The gross enrolment ratio in primary education has tended to remain near 100% for boys and recorded an increase of nearly 20 percentage points in the ten years period from 1992-93 to 2002-03 for girls (93%). The literacy rate (7 years and above) has also increased from 52.2% in 1992-93 to 65.4% in 2000-01.

Goal 3: Promote Gender Equality & Empower Women
India will have to promote female participation at all levels to reach a female male proportion of equal level by 2015. The female male proportion in respect of primary education was 71:100 in 1990-91 which has increased to 78:100 in 2000-01. During the same period, the proportion has increased from 49:100 to 63:100 in case of secondary education.

Goal 4: Reduce Child Mortality
Reducing under five mortality rate (U5MR) from 125 deaths per thousand live births in 1988-92 to 42 in 2015. The U5MR has decreased during the period 1998-2002 to 98 per thousand live births. The infant mortality rate (IMR) has also come down from 80 per thousand live births in 1990 to 60 per thousand in 2003 and the proportion of 1 year old children immunised against measles has increased from 42.2 percent in 1992-93 to 58.5 percent in 2002-03.

Goal 5: Improve Maternal Health
India should reduce maternal mortality (MMR) from 437 deaths per 100,000 live births in 1991 to 109 by 2015. The value of MMR for 1998 is 407. The proportion of births attended by skilled health personnel has been continuously increasing, (from 25.5% in 1992-93 to 39.8 % in 2002-03)

Goal 6: Combat HIV/AIDS, Malaria and Other Diseases
The prevalence rate has increased from 0.74 per thousand pregnant women in 2002 to 0.86 in 2003. This increasing trend needs to be reversed to achieve MDG 6. The death rate associated with TB has come down from 67 deaths per 100.000 population in 1990 to 33 per 100,000 population in 2003. The proportion of TB patients successfully treated has also risen from 81% in 1996 to 86% in 2003.

Goal 7: Ensure Environmental Sustainability
In 2003, total land area covered under different forests was 20.64%. The reserved and protected forests together account for 19% of the total land area to maintain biological diversity. The energy use declined consistently from about 36 kilogram oil equivalent in 1991-92 to about 32 kilogram oil equivalent in 2003-04 to produce GDP worth Rs. 1000. The proportion of population without sustainable access to safe drinking water & sanitation is to be halved by 2015.

Goal 8: Build Sustainable Local Economies
This is basically meant for the Developed Countries to provide development assistance to developing countries. The Government of India holds the following views regarding the role of the developed countries in achieving this goal:

The financial support needed to achieve the targets under this Goal had been estimated for the least developed land locked and small countries by a high-level panel on ‘Financing for Development at an additional amount of US $ 50 billion which would be required for this purpose every year till 2015.

However, a huge gap still exists for those countries between the development assistance required to meet the MDGs and what has been pledged by the developed countries so far.

Recent months have seen new commitments toward reaching the internationally accepted 0.7% of Gross National Income (GNI) target. This increase still leaves development assistance of donor countries as a group well short of 0.7%.

WHAT CAN BE DONE – SOME IDEAS:

• Plant trees.
• Donate blood, medicine, clothes, food, and toys.
• Conduct recycling campaigns.
• Visit children homes, orphanages, old homes etc.
• Adopt a nearby slum; survey on drop out children, and then give them education.
• Collect materials for first–aid kits and distribute them to places of worship.
• Select a date like World AIDS Day, Environment Day; make posters and carry out rallies etc.
• Conduct door-to-door awareness campaigns on HIV/AIDS.
• Food and clothing drives.
• Sexual and reproductive health workshops.
• Research, write, edit, and publish a booklet (or a book) on people who are making a positive difference in the community.
• Write to editors, local government agencies and officials, businesses regarding a prevailing community problem and measures to be taken.
• Use geometric shapes and patterns to design and make festival and birthday cards and present them to schools, hospitals, and government agencies.
• Visit homeless shelters and then calculate quantities of food and other supplies that would be needed to prepare meals for the homeless.
• Study weather systems and the damage they can cause; hold a clothing/food drive to help flood or famine victims.
• Adopt a nearby slum or a part of it for research; determining hygienic conditions, waste disposal, potable water etc.
• Study environmental effects of development; measure air pollution level and then launch a plantation drive.
• Study regarding India’s Independence struggle; interview freedom fighters, hold events and performances to pay tribute to those who laid their lives and recognition to their families.
• Volunteer yourself and mobilize others to volunteer for a social cause.
• Launch a drive to sensitize shopkeepers and vendors not sell tobacco and tobacco products to minors.
• Collect samples of food like vegetables, milk and spices and study levels of adulteration; get the findings publish in local newspapers and write to local authorities to take action.
• Give collage making activities to students on various topics of science, economic and social science.

SHAPE YOUR WORLD