IYD - 2012 International Youth Day at Sangam University Bhilwara

Online, August 12, 2012 (Newswire.com) - On the occasion of International Youth Day, Prof BR Natarajan President - Vice Chancellor shared the following with the faculty and students of Sangam University.

The United Nations' (UN) International Youth Day - IYD is celebrated on August 12 each year to recognize efforts of the world's youth in enhancing global society. It also aims to promote ways to engage them in becoming more actively involved in making positive contributions to their communities and make the world at large a better place to live. It was first celebrated in year 2000. Every year has a theme to focus the celebrations on and for 2012, the theme is "Building a Better World: Partnering with Youth".

To quote from the message of UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon's message for IYD 2012 "Youth are a transformative force; they are creative, resourceful and enthusiastic agents of change be it in public squares or cyberspace."

While youth broadly is the life span between childhood and adulthood, there are different age group definitions for same worldwide: UN 15-24, WHO 15-34, G20 19-25, China 15-29, USA 16-34, Australia 15-24. Until recently India had put age group 13-35 as youth and the Draft Youth Policy 2012 has redefined it as age 16-30.

As per the new policy, for age group 16-20 the focus would be on education, for age group 20-25 focus on employment and age group 25-30 focus would be on entrepreneurship. The target groups would be student youth, migrant youth, rural youth, tribal youth, youth at risk, youth in violent conflicts, out of school dropouts, groups with social / moral stigma and youth in institutional care. Within the target group, the three priority groups would be young women, youth belonging to socially and economically disadvantaged communities and differently abled youth.

Youth Development Index would include Youth Health Index, Youth Education Index, Youth Work Index, Youth Amenities Index and Youth Participation Index.

Youth can undoubtedly be change makers in thrust areas like promotion of national values, social harmony, national unity, education, health, sports and recreation, gender justice, participation in community service, environment and climate change issues, local government etc.