China-US youth workshop feeds trust

COPENHAGEN: Many people who came to the China-US youth workshop yesterday may have come for the free food, but for the 120 Chinese and American youths who showed up, they all came back with much more food for thought.

This year, unprecedented large youth delegations from all over the world came to Copenhagen to pressure their governments to make the right decisions that will affect their future. Among them is a self-organized Chinese youth delegation of 40 people, supported partly by funding from Nike and the Ford Foundation, who only asked the Chinese young people to have concrete conversations with their US counterparts in return. The US delegation, which has 350 students aged between 16 and 26, paid their way mostly with money made from bake sales and donations from their communities.

After five hours of interaction on a range of topics such as why the Copenhagen conference matters to them, their evaluation of the governments' emission reduction targets and how they would pressure the government to take quick action, the young people from both countries reached consensus on a lot of issues.