Youth Face of the MDGs

This multi-faceted campaign uses the medium of photography to feature the faces of young people and to document their relationship and relevance to the MDGs. The strategy here involves using the creative process to make goals that may seem abstract to young people and others instead concrete, personal, and particular - and deeply youth-related.

Partnership is the central approach for fostering participation in this initiative. Different youth and youth-serving projects and organisations supported by UN agencies and other partners will be tapped into in order to get in touch with young people around the world. To foster creative participation, UNFPA is offering ideas and guidance to these potential partners/participants, who will be responsible for all aspects of design, production, and implementation of the campaign. UNFPA encourages these collaborators to collect images and stories that are "innovative, creative, optimistic, emotional, featuring the wonders of being young, mixed with the face of reality, with a positive outlook and perhaps suggestions for a better tomorrow". UNFPA also urges participanting organisations to assure that photographers and writers have a joint vision toward which they will be working, such that the photography and text do not merely illustrate certain pre-conceived notions but instead constitute an investigative report of young people's reality around the world. Further, "creativity, cultural competency and gender sensitivity must be reflected in the final outputs of the campaign."

Specifically, participating organisations will produce original photographs in 2 countries of Africa, 2 countries of Latin America and the Caribbean, 1 country in the Arab States, 1 country in Eastern Europe and Central Asia, and 2 countries of Asia and the Pacific. The photographs are to be executed in collaboration with young people belonging to UN-supported national and regional networks. The photographs will be gathered into a movable exhibition showcasing all the MDGs and sequentially following lives of young people. This exhibit will also be hosted at the Main Gallery of the Secretariat in August and in the North Gallery of the same building from September to the end of October. Further, the exhibit (or parts of it) will travel to UN country offices or other venues around the world.

In order to open the exhibit to a broader audience, UNFPA will provide server space on its website to host these pictures and stories. UNFPA states that this website "is to feature the spirit of the exhibit and illustrate through pictures and text the relationship between young people and MDGs".

Supplementary printed materials will be developed to support these in-person and online photographic displays. Namely, an editorial text and brochures illustrating the links between youth and the MDGs will be produced in English, French and Spanish. In addition, regionally appropriate posters will be made available. Finally, a booklet will be produced in English, French and Spanish to document the photo exhibit and serve as an advocacy tool.

Youth (specifically in relation to the Millennium Development Goals).