The World Youth Parliament for Water (WYPW) is a network of passionate young people from over 80 countries, forming the ‘Leaders of Tomorrow’. The parliament responds to the interests of youth, working together to prioritize water issues and creates platforms for the expertise of youth to be recognized on these issues. WYPW supports youth-led water projects and ensures that youth have a valued and respected decision-making seat among senior water management officials.
Every three years, young talented people from all over the world are gathered to work together, shaping, and sharing youth perspectives for a more sustainable future regarding water and sanitation. This also creates an opportunity to renew the membership of the network, elect new representatives and develop an action plan for the following three years.
This year, the General Assembly, a Road to Dakar 2022 satellite event, proposed a new and innovative format that maximized the potential impact of the event while ensuring the health and safety of all participants. The General assembly presented a bimodal program combining a first part online and a second part in person activities.
Global Water Partnership Central and Eastern Europe was approached by International Secretariat for Water – Solidarity Water Europe (ISW) with an offer to organize and facilitate the Communication for Development session at the second day of a week-long event.
The goal of the session was to explore communication for development as a tool to amplify youth's voice, facilitate meaningful participation, and foster social change. Two co-facilitators, Zofia Pawlak (Warsaw University of Life Sciences – SGGW) and Jergus Semko (GWP CEE), guided the session throughout its two parts. During the first part, the speakers, presented an overview of a successful professional communication, using modern day techniques:
- Judit Palatinus (Tisza Office) opened the session and spoke about the integration of various communication channels and best practices for increasing the resonance of the communicated message.
- Monika Ericson (GWPO) introduced the topic of content creation as an overall communication strategy.
- Patricio Roulier Pazos (GWPO) talked about storytelling to increase the quality of communication.
- Helene Masliah-Gilkarov (ICPDR) further enriched the discussion with decision-maker communication, focusing on how young professionals can get together to work on joint topics.
The second part switched from education to action, and focused on a fictional case study where participants acted as a youth environmental movement, trying to save a polluted international river. The goal was to draft a communication strategy framework, addressing the pollution issue from the international perspective. The participants were split into breakout groups and together with the speakers they were compiling their solutions. The result of their work will remain accessible to them, to help them build their future communication campaigns.
GWP CEE thanks to all facilitators, speakers, and support organizers (provided by the ISW) for their engaged involvement. A high value content was secured through their input.
Find out more about the event by accessing the 5th General Assembly – The recap site.