The Budapest Water Summit ended last Friday. For the youth, the summit it ended in applause.
For three days, we have been working hard to share our thoughts and get our joint visions on paper. Five sessions were organised by youth organisations involved in the Water Sector: UNCSD Major group of children and youth, IWA young professionals, Youth Diplomacy, World Water Council youth delegates and WaterLution, and the World Youth Parliament for Water. Working together with so many organisations has been a great inspiration and we hope we can inspire other organisations in the water sector to increase their cooperation.
All ideas and outputs of the sessions were captured in the Youth Statement (this statement can be found on our website). Based on these experiences and ideas, I have written a first draft of the speech to report back to the plenary. For me, the best experience of the whole Youth Summit was to sit together with all participants, go through the speech and add to it together. You can see the result of this joint effort here: Closing speech by the youth.
Now, we can continue to build on the fundaments we have laid during the World Water Forum 6 and the Budapest Water Summit. We’ll increase cooperation, work hard to connect different youth organisations from all around the world and to provide a platform to share thoughts, statements, tools and experiences.
Already, we look forward to World Water Forum 7 and to increased, quality, youth participation.
Give the future a chance!