Ten Aurora area youth traveled to South Korea to attend the 2019 Seongnam City International Youth Conference from October 28th through November 4th, 2019.

Our sister city, Seongnam City, hosts a bi-annual youth conference to provide a platform for youth from around the world to collaborate with Korean youth to consider and respond to relevant global issues.  This year’s theme discussed entrepreneurship, the environment, employment and what the lives of youth will look like in the future. Aurora students, along with peers from from Germany, South Africa, Japan and Korea had a unique opportunity to hear global perspectives on the challenges and rewards of globalization while also gaining exposure to future career pathways in the globalized marketplace.

Together, the students created a Joint Declaration Youth Action Plan which stated they will work together to:

1. To raise awareness of social issues, youth can make clubs in their school, create opportunities to take action and education people what they can do.
2. We are faced with a lack of communication due to smart phone addiction, so we suggest to set up a “phone-free” day.
3. Youth today are faced with the threat of privacy infringement and therefore we should stand with advocacy groups to solve the problem.
4. Instead of using plastic bags, we should use eco-friendly and reusable products such as metal, paper or pasta straws that are more sustainable for the environment.
5. To save resources, we suggest using second hand products or repaired items.

We’d like to thank the Korean Ministry of Education’s Institute for International Education for this amazing opportunity! Our students gained new insights by learning about other cultures by their participation and by sightseeing!