Global Young Greens Congress Report.

The Global Young Greens (GYG) conference was held in Berlin from 8th-14 August 2010. This was
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the second GYG Congress, the first beind held in Nairobi in 2007.
It was attended by up to 120 participants, (35 from Asia Pacific, 32 from Africa, 7 from Americas and
the rest from Europe).The Junge Grüne (German Young Greens) did an excellent job of organising the
congress, with held from the GYG Steering Committee and the Prepartion Team.

The theme of the Congress was Green Youth for a Global Green Change. There were many excellent
panel discussions, workshops and speakers on topics such as supporting small farmers, Green New
Deal, World Trade, fundraising, campaign training etc.

On Tuesday 10 August there was space for regional meeting. Asia-Pacific Young Greens (APYGN)
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met. We discussed two topics -

(1) how we want to run APYGN and what sort of network we want to be.
• Everyone was in consensus that we wanted to be the official youth wing of Asia Pacific
Green Network.
• We want to establish working groups
• We will set up a Facebook group and an email list
• Both meeting at GYG and APGN will be considered formal meetings for APGN
• We hope to get a group of people together who will be like the coordinating committee for
APYGN.
1. (2)GYG Steeering Committee – 7 men and 3 woman put their names forward initially to be the
Asia Pacific Steering Committee members for GYG. From these 5 men and 2 woman presented
themselves to be elected by the general GYG congress. The 4 people elected as the Asia Pacific
Committee members were:

• Kalpana Ambepitiya (Sri Lanka)

• Alex Surace (Austrlia)
• Masami Muramatsu (Japan)
• Chung-Ming Wang (Taiwan)

The structure of GYG was discussed and a new structure was adopted at the Congress. This structure
specifies membership of GYG, voting rights at GYG congress (see www.globalyounggreens.org) for
more information on these.
As part of this new structure GYG defines itself as:
“The GYG is a world-wide is a non-profit network of young green activists and
organisations committed to the GYG objectives and the GYG statement of
principles, loosely affiliated to the Global Greens and endorsing the Global Greens
Charter (see annex).”
I am a bit unclear as to what exactly is meant by loosely affiliated, and this was unable to be removed
during the congress due to certain reasons.
The other main point was that it was agreed that at least 50% of members on the Steering Committee
had to be woman.

The Congress was great, a bit Euro-centreic at times, achieved a lot in regards to solidifying the GYG
and putting them in a strong position to move forward into a Green future!