International Youth for Health

There are hundreds, if not thousands of health organizations across the country, all working for the same thing: the improvement of lives through education. This is wonderful, but there is one problem. There are so many organizations, and they are all working towards the same thing, but they are not working together. With my project, I want to remedy this. I want to consolidate the works of all health organizations. In order to make the impact we strive for, we need to work together; we need to unite our educational health efforts not only within the United States, but across the globe. Youth for Health (Y4H), is an organization that formed a global alliance of youth health advocates allowing youth to collectively compaign and promote such health issues as tobbacco-prevention, addiction control, healthy diets, physical activity, protection of the environment, gender equality, HIV prevention, and road safety, and to do so on a global level. In October 2007, three other students and I visited Secretary General Ban Ki-moon in New York as delegates of Youth for Health to present 250,000 signatures collected globally in support of this incredible youth movement. These signatures were presented along with the Y4H charter to ask for United Nations support in making this movement as effective as possible. We will continue to collect signatures and hope to reach 1 million by the end of 2008. With this project, I aim to not only continue Youth for Health's ojectives globally, but also to make sure that these advocacy efforts are more visible and apparent in the United States. Much of the rest of the world has already established effective programs to help with these initiatives. I am working to see that the great strides being made in India and elsewhere are also being made in the U.S. Health in the United States is on a serious decline. Youth for Health can help, but only if we take initiative to continue education with new Y4H-designed programs design, and spread them across the nation, uniting with the international movement for improved health education.