A work group of the Youth G8 on the «Global Innovations Infrastructure» issue met on the 11th of September in the Assembly Hall of the Novosibirsk Town Hall building, in order to discuss the signed Declaration and tell mass media representatives how the group ahd looked for answers to innovation questions in Novosibirsk.
«Youth G8» is a nongovernemental project organised by eight NGOs from «Group of Eight» countries. The Youth Summit is a big event annually held by YG8, which takes place several months before the «Group of Eight» meeting in the presiding country, and gets together young political and business leaders, as well as specialists in international relations and global economy aged 20–35 from eight member countries and five observer countries. Participants hold group negotiations with heads of the states, ministers and experts and handle problems appearing on the G8 agenda. The result of the negotiations, a «Youth Communiqué" of the YG8, is passed on to the «Group of Eight».
«We must handle all problems by ourselves and turn everything around. This behavior must be an example for young people," Tim Goodwin, Head of the YG8 Organising Committee in the United Kingdom (President of the YG8 association in the UK) says. «While drafting the declaration, we didn’t have any major disagreements. The only thing we discussed was the format of the message we wanted to send. But we reached an agreement on this issue quickly as well. The hospitable atmosphere of Novosibirsk probably helped it. The city is worth visiting more often, we think».
«I am from Canada," Lyndsay Roswear, Co-Head of the YG8 Organising Committee in Canada joins the conversation, «and the most surprising and pleasant thing about the place is the welcome we received. You can tell from the smiles on our faces that we are very pleased with the Novosibirsk hospitality. There’s only one things we could wish for: to visit this place again».
«We are very grateful to have an opportunity to meet the Novosibirsk and the Novosibirsk Region authorities. Without it, we would be just talking heads. We need to meet people who really make decisions. In this respect, Novosibirsk proved to be a very open city, and the communications we were offered just amazed us. You don’t’ see such understanding from authorities everywhere," said Anita Pan, Co-Head of the YG8 Organising Committee in Canada (Head of the Canada Youth Diplomacy Association).
The YG8 leaders signed the Declaration on global innovations infrastructure issues.
«I’m pleased that it happens in Novosibirsk because the adopted declaration will be entitled «Declaration on Global Innovations Infrastructure. Novosibirsk 2009», Ksenia Khoruzhnikova, Head of the YG8 Organising Committee in Russia (President of the International Youth Diplomacy League) noted.
The main idea of the Declaration, according to Ksenia Khoruzhnikova, is to acknowledge that we have a problem and then explain how to solve it. The Youth G8 contribution to the Declaration is not the direct way to solve the problem, but still a direction, guiding marks on that way. «We discussed very important issues: how we must handle it and whether we must provide conditions for somebody to work on a problem which hinders innovations implementation», Ksenia mentioned.
Kristina Farberova