The Global Youth Forum Community

The Global Youth Forum (GYF) is a one day conference for 100 high school students who are interested in international issues. Students participate in workshops, games and activities all geared toward involving them in global issues. The purpose of the event is to expose students to global issues and present different ways they can become involved in "making the world a better place," both at home and abroad.

The Challenge

To achieve their goals for the event, conference organizers needed to meet two objectives: to coordinate the event in a streamlined manner; and to engage high school students-an historically passive audience-in a familiar environment using their own language.

With any conference, information changes rapidly and frequently in the weeks preceding the event. For this reason, event information needed to be collected in a centralized location where it could be easily accessed and updated. Ideally, students should be given access to this information, as well as organizers, teachers and presenters, in order to plan ahead logistically for the conference. Organizers not only wanted to be able to connect with presenters and students before the conference; they also wanted to enable students to connect with their peers to encourage open dialogue and generate interest in the event.