Youth Assembly

The TYA Takes on a New Stride

by Patricia Kim

    Maintaining their mission statement but going for a whole new structure, THIMUN Youth Assembly (TYA) started their second day with an inspiring guest speaker, Thom Woodrofe - the founder and Director of Left Right Think-Tank. This year more than every other year, TYA has invited numerous guest speakers to give motivational speeches to its members, and to emphasize the sheer importance of young people and their fresh ideas.
TYA took an an entirely new stride this year with the introduction of the idea of individual projects. The Conference had been working on group projects in previous years, which meant that the members of each committee contributed with different ideas to create a complete project for the pertaining topic. TYA 2010 officers approached the Conference differently."We thought coming up with only one project as a committee would be hard to be implemented in all countries," said Akua Nyame-Mensah, one of the Deputy Presidents. "By creating individual projects, members are able to project ideas and projects that pertain to their own country on a smaller scale."
    TYA includes four major committees: Environment, Sustainability, and Human Development (ESHD), Gender Issues (GI), Cultural Awareness, Human Rights and Globalization (CHRG), and Diseases and Development (DD). For the reason that these issues sometimes seem too broad, the individual projects come into the picture to allow participants to freely come up with various ideas of a much greater range.
    Selen Uman, a participant of DD, suggested raising awareness of cervical cancer in African countries, while Seungho Yang, another participant of DD is designing a program that can predict diseases or illnesses according to a person's symptoms. In CHRG, Raymond Ha is coming up with a plan to raise awareness of foreign migrant workers in South Korea.
One of the goals of TYA is to contribute to the capacity of youth to create, develop, and construct community specific projects via the workshops; after all, THIMUN Youth Assembly produces many of the youth's most innovative ideas.