Youth Development

Attacks on civilians, torture, the use of child soldiers or biological weapons—all are prohibited in war. But not everyone is familiar with the international humanitarian laws that govern armed conflict. To introduce students to the concepts and content of these rules, EDC and the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) developed the Exploring Humanitarian Law (EHL) program.

From dropout to vagrant to teen mother, 19-year-old Manoucheka Lizaire’s life quickly unraveled as she followed a path familiar to girls living in poverty. In Haiti alone, thousands of teens are like Manoucheka—out of school and living on the streets, in domestic servitude, or with families too poor to provide them with an education.

A lush mangrove forest with its wealth of tropical plants, animals, and sea organisms, one of the most biodiverse wetland habitats on the planet, thrives just off the coast of Colombia. For children in a local neighborhood, the mangroves are a gateway to discovering ecology—and computer software.

EDC and Jusoor Arabiya, a leadership and consultancy center in Kuwait, presents a panel called Youth Leadership in the Arab World Post 9/11 at the 18th Annual National Service-Learning Conference, organized by The National Youth Leadership Council and the International Association for National Youth Service. It will draw 2,900 students, educators, policy-makers, and representatives from community-based organizations.

Watch young people at home today, and you’re likely to see them managing technology with an ease that can inspire awe and envy. They text and they IM; they Google and they design their own Web pages; they download music and burn CDs—all in service of their friendships, romances, interests, and hobbies. But watch young people at school, and you’re more likely to find them seated at desks, listening to lectures, reading from textbooks, and penciling in little oval bubbles on standardized tests.

When describing the training program he has designed to prepare people to work as mentors for youth in the juvenile justice system, Joe Ippolito uses some expected terms, like support and nurture. But he is just as likely to lead with terms like challenge and agitate.

When Trevor Dudley saw that the architectural plans for a new school in Kampala, Uganda, had no athletic field or recreational facilities, he decided to intervene. Bucking the prevailing opinion that sports were a distraction that had no place in the world of learning; Dudley set out to show the positive impact athletics could have on children and communities. A native of England, Dudley has lived in Africa for 25 years, 18 of them in Uganda, working as a construction consultant.

For years, Palestinian youth living in the West Bank and Gaza have seldom been perceived as an important resource for building their nation’s future. The Palestinian Youth Empowerment Program, or RUWWAD, is hoping to change that perception.