Seeing as this is my first blog post, I will start with a short introduction so that we can get to know ourselves a little better. My name is Christopher Onoka and I am a 19 year old Kenyan currently studying civil engineering in Germany. I love basketball and I am a proud foodie. So now let’s get down to business. Over the course of the next 6 months I am going to upload a blog post weekly, talking about a wide range of topics that all have to do with the youth. Discourse is...

Something pretty important is happening on the 12th of September this year. The UN Committee for the Rights of the Child will meet in Geneva to discuss updating the Convention for the Rights of the Child for a digital age. The world has certainly changed a lot since the 1980′s, the decade throughout which the convention was first drafted! To assist the Committee in their deliberations, and to ensure that young people’s experiences can directly inform their discussion, we are curr...

I have always been proud of being a teetotaller. It was a principle that I associated with my life from the very young days and to this day I have lived my life adhering to it with fierce commitment. Presently, I am interning at the Sri Lanka Anti-Narcotics Association, an organisation which works towards realising a drug- and alcohol-free nation. But sadly, alcohol seems to be a ‘sport for the trendy’ in our island nation today. ‘Statistics’ say that alcoholism is on...

They say “money makes the world go round” and that “education is the key to success”. With money invested in important sectors like education there can be development. That is why if I were a millionaire I would invest more in education and youth empowerment. I would invest in education especially in girl child education. I would make sure that the majority of girls access education because they say that “when you educate a girl child you educate a nation”. This is...

If I were a billionaire... What would you do if you had a billion pounds? What could you spend all that cold, hard cash on? I know what I'd spend it on. I'd buy a sports car and a mansion (or two). But seriously what could we do with a billion pounds to help? What could we do to be a good citizen of this world of ours? I don't need to go into detail, because the answer is simple really. If I had a billion pounds I would help the poor. I would help those in Africa, by giving...

As the proverb goes: Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime. If I were a millionaire I would teach the world how to fish. I use the phrase how to fish metaphorically, we do not need so many fishermen. Poverty is one of the greatest problems of the world. A millionaire alone will not be able to eradicate poverty but the investment in the human race can be a big step in the right direction. Why does poverty exist?...

Hey guys! My name is Ethan Tse and I live in California, USA. Other than being pretty much the average American, I have one passion that I think others may connect with. I stumbled into this passion while surfing the web and looking at surprising articles on CNN and other news websites. What I found was a multitude of articles about kids OUR AGE being TORTURED. This is when I began to actually research the topic. I feel as though we need to help youth (our age) escape being torture...

My names are Elijah Lufunda from Zambia.It is very touching to find a school boy/girl walking in the streets while wearing a school uniform & when you ask them why they are not in school they answer you like "I have been chased out of school because I have not paid school fees". Now the question is why would some one chase a boy/girl out of school because of school fees as if he/she (boy/girl) pays for himself/herself? Would you do that to your son or your daughter?

Dear VOY, Working with you has been a great journey. I honestly believe that you have made my life a more meaningful one by simply allowing me to write away my concerns on this forum. I have grown mentally and emotionally while reading what many of my peers have written from all over the world. I still cannot believe that I can share my opinion as openly and freely as I do beside my friends from Asia, Africa, Europe, Latin America, and beyond. I wish to commemorate my 1 year an...