Inter Press Service - August 11, 2007
Rajiv Fernando

Called the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), the Summit's Millennium Declaration also outlined a wide range of commitments in human rights, good governance and democracy.

Now halfway through to the 2015 deadline for the MDGs, significant progress can be seen. But, according to a recent United Nations progress report, the overall success is still far from assured and will depend on whether developed nations abide by their promised aid commitments.

There is now a group of teens from the United States who are looking to take the initiatives of the MDGs into their own hands.

Labeled the HERO Youth Ambassador Program, the United Nations Association of the United States of America (UNA-USA), in partnership with the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), started HERO as an awareness-building and fundraising initiative.

Supporting children living in HIV/AIDS-affected communities in sub-Saharan Africa, the programme strives to better the lives of children who have been orphaned or made vulnerable by HIV/AIDS using comprehensive, holistic school-based support. The HERO programme is currently run in Namibia and South Africa.

The programme is still in its infancy, having had its pilot launch in the summer of 2006. Gabrielle Armand, the executive director of communications and marketing for UNA-USA, told IPS: "This was the first year the programme officially had a full application process behind it."

According to Armand, they worked with media partners Hearst Corporation and Cosmo Girl Magazine to go through the countless applications they received for the 2007 programme.

"We were pleasantly surprised that a tonne of young adults actually wanted to do this and we got hundreds of submissions...We were really looking for young people who were well rounded, who had community service in their past, who had an interest in doing this beyond themselves and were willing to go on an experimental journey with us," said Armand.

In an interview with IPS, two of the HERO Youth Ambassadors from 2007 shared their experiences from Namibia and South Africa.

Dayna-Joy Chin of Scarsdale, New York (known as DJ amongst the group), who went to Namibia, first watched her older brother Christian prepare for his trip to Africa as a HERO Youth Ambassador in the pilot programme.

"I wanted to do this because I learned from my brother and the youth ambassadors from last year just how amazing it was to be there. Based on the stories they told me and the pictures I saw, I wanted to make a small difference," Chin said.

According to Chin, Namibia was different because the youth ambassadors were stationed in one location for the entire month. They worked at three different schools, helping with maintenance projects, such as building fences and laying bricks, and then having afternoon camp days with the children and forming a close bond with them.

"There was this one little boy who was a little troublemaker but everyone's favourite, who sat on my lap. That day we made peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and he offered me a bite of his sandwich. For him to share that with me, even though having food there is important, was really touching," said Chin.

Rammy Salem, of Bayonne, New Jersey, who went to South Africa, was eager to take action in providing school-based support to children in South Africa.

Asked why he wanted to join the programme, Salem told IPS: "As much as I appreciate people making donations, it's just more meaningful for me to actually go there and see something develop as a result of my own actions and actually have a direct impact in people's lives."

Salem explained that the best part of the trip was to actually see the joy in the kids and that the whole trip was a humbling experience because of the children who had close to nothing but were still happy.

"I've seen more smiling faces at the schools that I went to than anywhere else in my life. Despite all the hardships that they face, they still seem generally content with everything," said Salem.

Both HERO ambassadors said this one month programme was a life-changing experience.

"It was about taking the MDGs and finding a way to put them into a place where people could see them, feel them and almost taste them and really intimately understand why they are so important but also why they're such a huge challenge. The timeliness of us being exactly at the halfway point and re-evaluating what's been done as far as some of the goals, which have been met and which ones have not," said Armand.

UNA-USA hopes to expand the HERO programme to include students from around the world as well. There are plans for next year to bring in students from Canada, Mexico and Britain. The goal going forward is to eventually have some students representing each of the African nations, Eastern and Western Europe and Asia.

As an added bonus to past participants, UNA-USA has created job opportunities for them to come back and help ease the new groups into the experience and also to keep them connected.

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+ HERO Youth Ambassador programme (www.heroaction.org)

+ CULTURE: It All Begins With a Webcam and a Smile (http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=38850)

+ MDGs: Midway to 2015 (http://ipsnews.net/new_focus/devdeadline/index.asp)

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