Global Youth Dialogue 2.0
Global Youth Dialogue 2.0 is an initiative by AIESEC in Japan and AIESEC in Mainland of China in collaboration with AIESEC Sri Lanka to create a cross-cultural space for the youth of these countries to come together and exchange ideas, stories and hold discussions creating lifelong friendships.
I was fortunate enough to be an Organizing Committee Vice President for Operations for the Global Youth Dialogue for this May peak. It was a remarkable opportunity for me to keep connection with foreign entities, Japan and China, where we could renew our old friendships built up in LETTSEE. Finally, we worked in the same organizing committee together.
It was an amazing five days of experience, with almost all delegates actively engaged in the tasks and shared information about themselves, culture, social issues, and many more. They created new friendships and great memories.
Overall, the event was a great success.
Planning was started on 04th April 2021, with the organizing committee consisting of 12 members. This time the Dialogue happened in large participation more than expected. We expected 200 delegates, but we were astonished to see 500+ enthusiastic souls. The platform was an excellent opportunity for school leavers to build connections with new friends around the three countries. The opening and closing ceremonies were held on 05th May and 09th May, respectively. Within those five days, the delegates were fully active and were collecting information about interesting facts of their countries, lifestyle, sociology, and all about cultural differences.
Delegates were free to use any platform for communication, and they had used Zoom and WhatsApp. I was assigned to six groups with four delegates in each, including Sri Lanka and China, to be responsible for handling situations. For each group, a chief delegate was assigned and he manipulated the group tasks. We gave them an activity list for golden time and daily time for each day so that the delegates can build up interesting and purposeful conversations. These are few souvenirs they created on the first day.
On all the other days, 2nd, 3rd, 4th and 5th days, delegates were fully interactive and they had made their conversations more interesting talking about their lifestyles, educations styles, hobbies, etc. They had shared language phrases used in their day-to-day lives and sung songs in their languages. It was nice to see that few Sri Lankan delegates were already familiar with Chinese and Japanese languages.
You might be curious about what the tasks we gave them were.
We gave them two periods of time they need to have a conversation, golden time and daily time. Group members can select a convenient time slot for each periods of time and go with the process. But practically what happened was that they completed the two sets of tasks early and started their own conversations they were curious to hear. We just gave them a few simple tasks from the introduction to the self-reflection within five days, including group calls, creating Facebook memes, and expressing what they learned from their partners and Dialogue.
In the end, we were surprised to see their feedbacks and creations, including their journey throughout the five days.
The Organizing Committee
This was my first national OC experience and I met exceptional individuals there. Everyone was from other entities and it was a chance for me to explore more and work with these energetic youngsters. The memory we all laugh at together is how we acted all formal at our very first OC meeting; it was pretty weird 😄. I’m sure we will be publishing a sticker pack named GYD OC soon 🙄. This is a video I captured at our signing-off.
YES you can join 😃
You can join for the next GYD as a delegate if you are a youngster: both AIESECers and non-AIESECers are welcome. If you are an AIESECer, you can apply for the organizing committee.
By now, the Organizing Committee for Global Youth Dialogue for this August peak is appointed. You can apply for a delegate if you are willing to have this life experience. I invite all of you to take this opportunity and get the best out of it.
For more details, stay tuned with AIESEC Sri Lanka official facebook page.
