The theme of International Youth Day 2015 is “Youth Civic Engagement.” The engagement and participation of youth is essential to achieve sustainable human development. Yet often the opportunities for youth to engage politically, economically and socially are low or non-existent. 

More efforts are needed to raise awareness about the importance of youth civic engagement and its benefits to the individual and to society, including for sustainable development as well as resilience and wellbeing. The International Youth Day 2015 campaign aims at promoting civic engagement and participation of youth in politics and public life, so that young people can be empowered and bring a full contribution to society, development and peace.  You can be part of these efforts! 

The Inter-Agency Network on Youth Development, led by the co-chairs, DESA and UNDP, is running an online campaign in the lead up to International Youth Day 12 August 2015. The campaign will open up a space for young people to share their stories and ideas on civic engagement activities. Young people will be able to share their message by submitting a photograph that relates to the theme, by tweeting ideas and opinions on the theme using #YouthDay, or by organizing an International Youth Day Event.  Youth should contribute in the building and designing of their future!

What we want:

  • Tweets about the positive impact of youth participating in youth civic engagement activities
  • Photos of young people portraying how they engage in and promote  civic engagement activities for change
  • Spread the word about International Youth Day – share our material via FB, Twitter and Instagram using the hashtags #YouthDay
  • Organize an event to celebrate International Youth Day in your community, school, youth club, or workplace. You can get some ideas from our toolkihttp://bit.ly/1f7gC4S

What you get:

  • You’ll help in spreading the word about the need of engaging youth in positive opportunities for youth civic engagement and participation.
  • Selected photo entries will be chosen for the #YouthDay competition, to be selected by UN4Youth Facebook followers. The winning photo will be showcased at the International Youth Day event on 12 August in UN Headquarters, and online, via @UN4Youth and @undp4youth Social Media platforms, and may be used for the World Youth Report 2015
  • Selected tweets will be showcased in the  #YouthDay Postcard on social media
  • If you organize an event, let us know about it, and we’ll Map it on our IYD activities map http://bit.ly/1L5SxIW

Share your story with the world! Get involved and submit your photo to youth@un.org by 23 July 2015 or to UN4Youth Instagram account using #YouthDay at bit.ly/1pl4gZu along with the copyright release form:http://bit.ly/1J8r3So