Taken from www.igc.org
Global Kids, Inc., a member of the Joint Center's Youth NABRE network, is an educational organization based in New York City that prepares urban youth to become global citizens and community leaders. Here in Durban we interviewed Global Kids youth leader Annie Valembrun, a high school student from New York City, who is attending the Youth Summit and NGO Forum. She and the Global Kids staff are providing daily coverage of the WCAR events from a youth perspective, which may be accessed at www.globalkids.org as well as through PBS Online's NewsHour Extra (PBS). For Durban updates from other attending youth organizations, visit www.youthchannel.org/durban/topics.php.
JCPES: How long have you been a part of Global Kids organization?
Annie Valembrun: About 10 months. So far, I have been facilitating workshops for Global Kids. The first one was on discrimination and the other one was on women's health issues.
JCPES: When you heard you were coming to the World Conference Against Racism (WCAR), what did you hope this conference would address?
A. V.: Honestly, I was hoping they were going to address sexual orientation. They have addressed it once. I was about to read the Youth Declaration to see if it was addressed formally in their declaration.
JCPES: Why do you think sexual orientation is an important issue?
A. V.: It is an important issue because I am gay.
JCPES: What has the experience at the conference been like so far?
A. V.: Very interesting - it's been interesting how people get up and are rowdy. There are over 500 people gathered here and about 700 youth. I expected this rowdiness and I like it.
JCPES: What are the issues the youth are debating?
A. V.: People are mostly arguing about language. They want the declaration to be translated into French and Spanish. It's an issue because people don't have professional translators, and they're trying to gather people.
JCPES: Have you been meeting youth from other countries?
A. V.: I've met over 30 youth and made relationships with 11 of them.
JCPES: Are you seeing whether the issues you face are similar to issues youth are facing in other countries?
A. V.: I have a seen that a lot of youth deal with the same issues, the same problems - racism, sexual identity, and violence.
JCPES: What do you hope will happen after the conference?
A. V.: The Declaration is very well written. [I hope that for] other people that are discriminated against - that the laws will be passed so they won't be discriminated against. Well, I know that the laws will not be finalized until about a year from now. I hope that after a year or so of waiting that there are actually laws preventing some forms of discrimination, if not all.
JCPES: Since participating in this event and your work with Global Kids, have you thought how you want to focus on these issues in the future?
A. V.: Well, I think people need to be informed of these issues. A lot of people that I met said they didn't even know that the United States had racism. I think informing people would help.
Maggie Potapchuk is Senior Program Associate at the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, where she works on the Network of Alliances Bridging Race and Ethnicity (NABRE) program.