With the upcoming opening of a new session of the United Nations General Assembly in September, a coalition of more than a million young people from around the world are preparing to ask their leaders to take a stand on global health issues.  As a United Nations intern who represents and reaches out to youth, I see this as an important chance to let young voices be heard.

Youth For Health and Global Youth Action on Tobacco are two youth organizations committed towards making lasting changes to promote safer health policies for young people. The groups will will speak before the Secretary-General Ban Ki Moon with a charter on youth, health, the environment, and development.

The groups claim the present health policies have a negative effect on youth.  The impact of problems such as global warming or the HIV/AIDS pandemic will most greatly affect young people in the future.   The charter devised by young people includes the following reforms for governments:

On June 16, 1976, thousands of black students from Soweto, South Africa took to the streets to demand better education and the right to learn in their own language.  Hundreds were shot down and the violence led to days of rioting known as the Soweto Uprising. The spirit and courage of those youth is remembered annually as the Day of the African Child. Child Trafficking is the focus this year. We will provide coverage next week from many of the events taking place, but today I wanted to share a poem written as part of a writing contest we held with the UN Cybershoolbus.  This was submitted by Nkeiru, a child from Nigeria.

The moment I hear them mention poverty
My mind reminds me of the future
there is no future with poverty
it is a lost future in the face of poverty

Yesterday, the ONE Campaign was announced as one of only three finalists for this month's MySpace Impact Award. ONE's MySpace page boasts of over 110,000 friends (and growing!) and was selected by MySpace as a finalist not only because of the tremendous results that ONE has been able to claim as an organization, but also because of the cutting-edge manner in which we have incorporated MySpace into our outreach and campaigns.

In August 2006, Concern Worldwide expanded its emergency response program in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) to respond to the needs of displaced people returning home after years of violent conflict. Focusing on Katanga, the nation’s most violent and impoverished province, Concern’s program has assisted with the resettlement of displaced and returned families by providing them with food as well as basic supplies including seeds, tools, and household resettlement kits. Concern is also working with community members to rebuild schools, roads and bridges.

Proffer the entirety of your life and your body for the development of Ghana and never forget what George Bernard Shaw once said: “I am of the opinion that my life belongs to the whole community and as long as I live, it is my privilege to do for it whatever I can. I want to do for it, whatever I can. I want to be thoroughly used up when I die, for the harder I work the more I live”.