International youth congress underway in Lilongwe

Youths from four countries are meeting in Lilongwe to discuss the role they can play in leadership, environmental affairs, human rights and sustainable development.

The meeting, which has attracted participants from Malawi, Ethiopia, Zimbabwe and Norway,  has been convened by the Network for Youth Development (NYD) with funding from FK Norway.

NYD executive director Gift Numeri said the meeting seeks to respond to current global challenges in the four participating countries.

“All over the world, we have challenges with leadership, environmental issues, human rights and sustainable future. Those are the issues we want to address in this programme,” he said.

Numeri said after two weeks of extensive mentoring in Malawi, the youth will go to Uganda where a similar training will take place before deploying them to different countries for apprenticeship.

“After this stage, the participants will then return to their respective countries to pursue specific projects developed by themselves and we will support them,” he explained.

One of the Malawian participants, Timothy Bengo, said he hopes to gain skills from the training and to become a youth champion in his community.

“We hope to become productive youths and champions among our colleagues,” he said. n