Rio+20 Portal

The Congress will run from Thursday 12th April – arrivals and welcome evening to Monday, April 23rd – departures. Congress hosts will not provide any accommodation or meals outside of these dates (though delegates are encouraged to arrive before and/or stay after to take advantage of the Tourist opportunities in and around Rio.)

Components of the Congress

The World Youth Congress is not just a conference. It is a festival, a fun and mufti-faceted series of training courses, an advocacy exercise for youth-led development, a hands-on series of action projects with local people and many other things besides. Here is a list of some of the main components of it:

• Exhibition: All the delegates and NGOs that attend the congress will have the opportunity to exhibit their projects and/or organizational achievements in the exhibition area.

• Action Projects: For five days of the international congress delegates will work with local youth and citizens on 50+ action projects in different parts of the City of Rio. The Action Projects are where delegates get out from the seminar rooms and workshops, to get some handson experience of doing community improvement projects in the Favelas of Rio de Janeiro.

• Social and Cultural Events: The Congress talent show is always a highlight – where the artists and others present their skills, and their unique ways of delivering the youth message of development to other delegates, and dignitaries. Also – Rio, our host city, is one of the most exciting cultural centers on the Planet. So, in addition to the nightly, international cultural events, concerts, parties, shows and comedy / karaoke events, you will have the opportunity to feel the magic of this creative hub of Brazil. And the Congress parties are legendary – nightly experiences that will leave you sleepless for most of the nights of the Congress.

• Skills Workshops: Most of these are youth-led, to allow delegates to learn from each other how to develop projects more effectively in their chosen field. There will be over 300 workshops aiming to appeal to the different interests of delegates. You will be able to attend 12 of them in addition to roundtables.

• Plenaries & Roundtables: With a thousand creative young people and politicians, academics, artists, diplomats and experts from different fields, Peace Child International’s unique way of running roundtables and plenaries – where the speakers come down from the panels and circulate to small groups of delegates to discuss issues one-on-one leads to very fruitful and constructive discussions on the themes of the congress – one in which every delegate has the chance to get his/her point across. This is how we will discuss the Congress outcomes.

• Debate: Each Congress, since 2008, has had a formal Congress Debate – where delegates thrash out a provocative motion, testing their oratorical and advocacy skills to win their argument. Delegates, and Virtual Delegates, are encouraged to propose motions to: program@wycrio2012.org – the more provocative and searching, the better!

• Festival: In 1972, the world celebrated the first Civil Society, Earth Day on April 22nd. It has been celebrated every year since, and, in Rio, we will celebrate this day with all the delegates of the congress and the youth of the city by organizing an International Youth Festival and march through the City to City Hall where we will deliver to the Mayor, and to assembled dignitaries, our National Action Plans and Appeals to government.

More? Do you have any ideas? What workshops, activities, events would you like to see at 6th World Youth Congress? Share your ideas with: programme@wycrio2012.org.

If you would like to host your own programme event – please fill in the application form and if you are successful we will get in touch with you nearer to the conference.

Venue To be decided: The organizers are currently exploring a number of locations – and will make a decision on the venue before the end of the year.