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300 youths attend "Int'l Youth Forum" for peace sake

Xinhua, November 3, 2015 Adjust font size:

Three hundred youth volunteers from all over the world between ages 15 and 18 are meeting here this week for the first International Youth Forum which opened Monday at the Council of Europe (CoE).

On Thursday they will draw up a charter for a "better world" at the European Parliament.

The event, organized by the American Field Service (AFS) "Vivre Sans Frontiere" (Live Without Borders) in partnership with the Alsace Attraction Agency, brings together high school students from 47 nationalities and five continents. Two hundred of them participate in an education program with AFS wherein they live and study in immersion environments for 10 months with volunteer families in France, Germany and Switzerland.

The AFS' mission is to place a bet on youth to move beyond cultural differences with the objective of bringing about a more peaceful world.

"AFS is a hundred-year-old international organization which every year allows thousands of young people to make intercultural exchanges, to go and discover the other and to enrich their experience through international movement," explains its president Saman Hosseini.

Born after the First World War, the AFS, known previously as the American Ambulance Field Service, was originally created by American students to treat those wounded in battle. After the Second World War, the AFS decided to launch total immersion education programs for young people. The non-profit organization has since established itself in more than 100 countries across the world and insists on its non-political stance.

"The International Youth Forum has as its ambition to make young people reflect on the theme of living together, citizen engagement, memory, and peace," summarized the director of AFS France, Myriam Verger.

"Since the launch of education programs, almost half a million young people were able to live a unique experience abroad which transformed them and thanks to which they could have impacts on society and work to make it more peaceful," she pleaded.

During the forum, which lasts until Nov. 6, the 300 youth gathered in the European capital will participate in visits, conferences, pedagogical workshops and draft a charter for peace which they will present Thursday to Members of European Parliament.

The International Youth Forum was approved by the Centenary Mission of the First World War to follow the precedent set by the Youth Forum held at UNESCO in November 2014 for the AFS centennial celebrations. Endit