Young people being part of the solution

KATHMANDU, Aug 14: Research Office at DevS Society of National College in collaboration with Copenhagen Consensus Center, a US non-profit think tank, successfully held the Post-2015 Youth Forum at the premise of National College in Baluwatar on Thursday, August 13.

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Also known as Post-MDG (Millennium Development Goals), the forum saw participation of 30 youth from National College and outside, who presented their analysis regarding the many targets to be included in the Post-MDG document.

The Post-2015 Youth Forum is a program initiated by Copenhagen Consensus Center under the project 'Post-2015 Consensus.' The Forums give young people between 18 and 30 years of age the chance to present their views on which would be the smartest targets for post-MDG period by using economic analyses and cost-benefit ratio.

The event began with the presentation on MDG and its relevance in the context of Nepal by Research Officer at DevS Society, Sudeep Kandel. Subsequently, forum moderator Ujjwal Upadhyay explained the criteria for rating the targets based on its importance in the context of Nepal. The targets covered various facets of development such as education, gender, nutrition, health, violence, biodiversity, energy and more. The participants were then asked to rate each of the targets as phenomenal, great, fair, poor or uncertain – exactly the same way Copenhagen Consensus Center asked the Nobel Laureate Expert Panel of economists to rate.

"We feel this will make a difference as it sets the platform for young people to voice their concerns and be a part of formulating development priorities for a project as big as this. This will certainly help the country and the world in many ways and will hopefully contribute to correcting some of the flaws that occurred in MDG," said Research Officer Kandel.

The output of this forum will be forwarded to Copenhagen Consensus Center where they will compile and present them at the United Nations Summit to be held on September 25-27 this year, to adopt the post-2015 development agendas. The output copy with recommendations will also be forwarded to the National Planning Commission of Nepal.