Kabul, 28 March 2005 The Afghanistan Office of the World Bank organized it's first ever Youth Open House on March 28. Close to 35 Afghan youth representing a variety of youth entities attended the event. They were selected in consultation with the Afghan Civil Society Forum.   | |  Sher Jan is talking about Youth Conference in New Delhi |
The event began at the Bank's garden, where the Bank's Country Manager for Afghanistan, Jean Mazurelle welcomed the youth with an emphasis ‘why open day’. The program was designed to be interactive and informal, and allowed participants to get an overview of the World Bank, its operations in helping government to rebuilt Afghanistan, as well as the Bank knowledge resources.  Given the post-conflict efforts underway in Afghanistan, Jean said, the future of the country were on young Afghan hands. He encouraged them to actively participate in country’s rebuilding efforts. Habibullah Wajdi, Education Specialist, described what the World Bank is and how the Bank finances projects to empower Afghan youth. He gave details of the Bank financed education projects, as well as JSDF youth entrepreneurship project
  | |  Wajdi is giving presentation on the  education project |
Sher Jan Ahmadzai, a youth activist, debriefed the participants on the Bank organized Paris and Sarajevo youth conferences. Later he and two other Afghan youth delegates to the recent conference of South Asian Youth Organizations in New Delhi  (Malaiz Daud and Sohail Sanjar) made a joint presentation on the conference conclusions. They shared a draft outline prepared at the conference on possible areas of collaboration between youth groups and the World Bank and said this would be the basis for further work with a wider group of young people.Due to the lack of enough knowledge about the Bank and its operations, the participants could not continue their discussions, as planned, about possible areas of collaboration, including the formation of an Afghan Youth Consultative Group (AYCG). Most of them believed they needed more time to know about the Bank and outline a more productive strategy for establishing an AYCG. Some of them shared their concerns of past experiences when they were trying to create a youth coordination body.   | |  A youth participant is asking question |
 Given the past experiences, they were very much pessimistic about coordinating such an initiative (AYCG) among larger youth entities. Although the invitation was quite clear on the objective of the Open House Day, some of the youth thought that they will leave the Bank with a bag full of money to implement youth related projects.  The Open House finished with a request from youth participants to organize another meeting with a larger number of youth representatives to discuss the idea of creating an AYCG and/or Afghan Youth Voice Group. It was suggested the meeting should take place in April 05 in collaboration with the Afghan Civil Society Forum. The Open House participants were invited for lunch, where after they visited the PIC (Public Information Center). While visiting the PIC, Estmatullah Shahpoor gave a presentation about the services provided by the Afghanistan PIC and PIC corner at Kabul University. |
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