World Summit Youth Award WSYA – A global contest for best practice to support a better world

World Summit Youth Award WSYA – A global contest for best practice to support a better world

The World Summit Youth Award is a global competition that selects and promotes best practice in e-Content and technological creativity. WSYA aims to demonstrate young people’s potential to create outstanding digital contents. It provides a unique opportunity for people from all UN member states to work together to address global developmental challenges of health, education, gender, access to better lives, etc.

According to the WSYA website, "WSYA is therefore both a showcase to the world for young designers, technologists and e-Content creators, and a global scale contribution to reducing poverty, protecting the environment, sharing knowledge and empowering young people.

The WSYA is promoted in all UN member states through the networks of the World Summit Award (WSA) the UN Global Alliance for ICT, other participating UN Organisations and Agencies, governments and NGOs, youth organisations and all those committed to making a real difference in the achievement of the MDGs".

WSYA GOALS – e-Contents for Change

· The World Summit Youth Award (WSYA) wishes to showcase the skills, ideas and projects of young people to create e-Contents and applications which address the MDGs.

· The WSYA will network best-practices and allow idea- and skill-sharing between the best and most innovative content creators and producers, application developers and designers.

· The WSYA will celebrate the achievements in local content creation and offer the projects to UN for the support of the MDGs.

WSYA's focus is the harnessing of the energy, potentials and strengths of the Youth (under the age of 30) who happen to be a majority of the world’s population. With access to electronic and communications technologies the youth can make more of a positive impact in their day to day lives and in their communities. Empowering the youth is therefore an effective way of addressing the critical developmental needs that exist throughout the world.

Rather than the picture of the angry, apathetic youth, WSYA is an attempt to present and promote the picture of youth that are innovative, positive and technologically aware. The essence is to celebrate and encourage such youth in view of the impact they are making through ICT and to provide role models and increase awareness ICT related opportunities and potentials, amongst the youth.