The Costa Rica News (TCRN) – Government representatives from Ecuador and Costa Rica August 12th, to discuss policies to modernize Latin American youth for being them the seed of future societies, during a forum on youth prior to the first Regional Conference on Population and Development.
Deputy Minister of Planning of Ecuador, Ana Maria Larrea, and Minister of Education of Costa Rica, Leonardo Garnier, were two of the main representatives of governments of Latin America Regional Forum Development Agenda and Social Investment in Youth.
The meeting, which served to commemorate the World Youth Day, was organized by the Ibero-American Youth Organization (OIJ), the Fund UN Population (UNFPA) and the Government of Uruguay.
Larrea recalled that about 200 million people, one-third of Latin America’s population are young and urged governments to “capitalize” the current “demographic” in the region “specific policies targeting youth.”
According to the deputy minister, is essential “passing of conceiving youth as mere beneficiaries of public policy to actually be leading players in the construction of the new society.”
You have to “generate a change in power relations” because the youth has been a “factor of change in the history of humanity,” he added.
The official said that in his country the authorities defend the philosophy of “good living”, defined as a change of “paradigm in terms of perspectives of development”, and the construction of “a new kind of society in which the relationships between living and human nature is different.”
Meanwhile, Garnier stressed that as sociological concept “youth has to do with the time variable, which is not about race, gender or social conditions”, making it more difficult to treat.
Moreover, as “the youth is the shortest stage of life” is essential to live “fully” something complicated in Latin America, which is “poor and very unequal” he complained.
As part of that philosophy explained in education in Costa Rica are giving more space in schools activities such as art and sport, usually neglected by most theoretical subjects and less spontaneous.
The youth forum, which ends this Monday, was inaugurated by Ahmad Alhendawi, Youth Special Envoy of the UN Secretary General, Ban Ki-Moon, the UNFPA Executive Director, Babatunde Osotimehin, and President of the Board of the Organization American Youth, Bruno Vanhoni. EFE
The Costa Rica News (TCRN)
San Jose Costa Rica
