Today, the Office of the Secretary-General’s Envoy on Youth, in partnership with other UN entities, international NGOs, and youth groups and stakeholders, launched a crowdsourcing initiative for youth priorities in the post-2015 development agenda. The crowdsourcing is part of the Global Partnership for Youth in the Post-2015 Development Agenda, which was announced on 31 January by the Secretary-General’s Envoy on Youth.
“This year presents many chances for engagement, including my Youth Envoy’s crowdsourcing campaign on the post-2015 agenda,” the Secretary-General stressed in a briefing about UN challenges for 2014 last January.

Building on the MyWorld2015 survey’s five key thematic outcomes – Education, Employment and Entrepreneurship, Health, Good Governance, and Peace and Stability, the Global Partnership for Youth and crowdsourcing initiative will work to identify youth priorities, and advocate for these to be reflected in the post-2015 development agenda.

The crowdsourcing has been endorsed by the President of the General Assembly, who calls the Global Partnership for Youth “a groundbreaking initiative.”
“The Global Partnership and crowdsourcing will be vehicles for youth and youth organisations to discuss what they think should be reflected as priorities in the post-2015 development agenda. It presents an opportunity for young people to help move the post-2015 development debate from consultation to consolidation, and my hope is that the output will feed into the intergovernmental discussions ahead of us,” said the Secretary-General’s Envoy on Youth, Ahmad Alhendawi.
Both the partnership and crowdsourcing are initiatives by the Office of the Secretary-General’s Envoy on Youth in partnership with ITU, UNFPA, UNMC, the Major Group on Children and Youth, with the support of the Inter-Agency Network on Youth Development’s Sub-Working Group on Post-2015, and the International Coordination Meeting of Youth Organisations. Since the call for partners was made approximately three weeks ago, over 1,100 organisations from across the globe have registered to join the partnership.

The partnership and crowdsourcing will link to online and offline events, including the High-Level Event on The role of women, the young and civil society to the post-2015 Development Agenda convened by the President of the General Assembly in March, and the World Youth Conference in Sri Lanka in May. Key outcomes of the crowdsourcing will be discussed and consolidated at the ECOSOC Youth Forum in June.

The crowdsourcing is available at crowdsourcing.itu.int. More information can be found here.