Schoolchildren debate health at global meet

Hindustan Times, November 15, 2006 New Delhi

IN A smaller, tighter and hyper world, it is only befitting that Children’s Day no longer remains a buntings-and –toffee affair. Younger people are increasingly demanding, and getting, a say in policy matters. Nowhere was this more evident than in the flag off of the four-day meet of the first Global youth Meet on Health (GYM) at Delhi’s National Stadium.

School student delegates from 35 countries- from Afghanistan to Mexico and Russia to argentine- have come together to thrash out issues which influence youth health. AS Ipshita Zutshi, a student of Mother’s International School and representative of the Indian delegation, says, “No issue is complex enough if it impacts our health, whether it is global warming or understanding the economics of tobacco production.” So how do students make a difference? “We have mock funerals. I was the person who , well, died, and everyone came to me and it was….” Amanda Webb trails off with half-shudder. The mock funeral forms part of Amanda’s activities to create awareness about drunken driving and post-drug-abuse driving. The senior school student from Canada is member of four youth programmes in her school-the suicide prevention outreach programme, the Canadian students against impaired driving group, the Canadian mental health association projects and the ‘pro-health with focus on tobacco’ drives. She, along with four other students, is in Delhi to participate in GYM. She phrases her sentences carefully, “We have to be positive. We don’t want to say ‘anti-tobacco’. We are pro health and hence concerned about the impact of tobacco use.” Are Delhi/Mumbai schools paying attention?

The meet, that moves to Agra for deliberations, will culminate in the drafting of a global youth advocacy movement: Y4H or Youth for Health. The project was conceived by HRDIAY-SHAN, a health education agency.

When 10, 000 children get together to make the world a better place, they mean business. Prime minister Manmohan Singh, inaugurating the meet, said, ‘Young people who are well-informed and motivated can influence not only their peers but also adults.” Now isn’t that what teenagers have been trying to make world understand all these years? And if you are concerned about children losing their innocence, here is what Zutshi in class XI feels, “Juniors are losing their innocence. At times, children use such foul language……”

There is, after all, more to children’s Day than an apple and boiled egg.