Global Environmental Youth Convention in Dubai

Dubai hosted the Global Environmental Youth Convention in December 2006. The details of the convention can be accessed at www.geyc.ae

One of the major initiatives of the convention was to launch the Global Youth Reporters programme.

The programme is part of a long-term project to teach basic news gathering and news writing skills to students from around the globe. Reuters Foundation consultants Nicholas Phythian and Roger Jeal are in Dubai working with the youth reporters covering GEYC 2006.

The nine reporters were chosen from students taking part in the Young Masters Programme, an online environmental education course run by the International Institute for Industrial Environmental Economics (IIIEE) in Lund, Sweden. The three mentors who selected them took part in GEYC 2000 and the initial GYRP sponsored by the World Conservation Union (IUCN). Consultants from the Reuters Foundation trained the mentors when they were youth reporters in Lund, Sweden, and in Amman, Jordan.
The GYRP team arrived in Dubai ahead of other GEYC delegates. The youth reporters learnt about basic story structure and how to present information in a way that is attractive to the reader. The GYRP newsletter, The Sandpaper with its motto "Scratching away at the Surface", keeps delegates up-to-date with what is happening at the conference. The GYRP Web site does the same for families and friends back home and spreads the word to the wider world beyond.

You can visit the GYRP website and check out the convention from a student point of view at http://www.iiiee.lu.se/gyrp