United Nations Global Youth Leadership Summit (GYLS), organized by the United Nations Office of Sport for Development and Peace (UNOSDP) took place in October 2006. The Summit sought to encourage and engage young leaders from all the five regions of the world to explore how they could better the future of their communities, regions, and the emerging global society through achieving the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). One young man and one young woman between the ages of 18 and 30 from each of the 192 Member States of the United Nations met in New York to share both ideas and plans on ways to overcome poverty and create positive change.

As the post-Summit phase progresses, it remains decidedly important to maintain the momentum achieved at this landmark event. UNOSDP encourages the young leaders around the world to reinvigorate their efforts to help increase progress towards the MDGs, and consequently build a peaceful and just world as a result.

To help bolster and focus these efforts, UNOSDP will update the Summit website on a more regular basis and include more interactive features to help facilitate youth to engage with other delegates across the regions. In a similar fashion and following a revival in moderation procedures, there has been increasing interest in the Yahoo! Groups of late, with youth exchanging ideas and communications on a more regular basis.

There is also much support available now for youth in this period through increased availability of mentoring programmes, and of course through the Millennium Changemakers project to support youth activities aimed at the MDGs. It is a competition open to delegates of the Summit only. See the Request for Proposals for more details. Sun Microsystems will fund the projects to convert the proposals submitted into reality. As such this is an exciting time for young leaders to profit from the advantages of the information technologies and know-how that is available today.

Youth leaders are making enormous strides in the effort to bring the world even closer to the MDGs and it is important their endeavors are utilized to the maximum, for youth represent the future and key to development.