Lawrence Lam @ WYD2002

World Youth Alliance

I had the privilege of being invited to a meeting of the World Youth Alliance at Bond Place Hotel on Saturday. This is a very impressive group of young people. The group was founded by Anna Halpine a few years ago as a reaction to a UN Youth Conference where delegates claimed to speak for the 3 billion young people of the world by pushing abortion, access to birth control and so on. Anna flooded the UN floor with brochures which say "Those youth do not speak for us" in retaliation. Ever since then, WYA has grown to become a credible UN-approved NGO which lobbies on behalf of pro-life and pro-family interests.

What impressed me most about these people were that religion was not brought into the debate. God was not mentioned because they knew that any religious mention destroys credibility in the UN. They focus on the dignity of the human person and argue for inalienable rights.

I met a lot of people from around the world, including Caroline from Kenya who heads up African Youth Alliance. She works in the slums of Nairobi and lobbies for improved lifestyle for everybody in the continent. I even got to speak to her in French, although it was not very good and she corrected me several times. ;)

I went for curiosity's sake. I don't know how I'll be able to get involved but I hope to make a valuable contribution to this impressive group sometime along the way.

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It is not my intent to offend anyone here. What I wrote was straight from the heart: uncensored, uncut.