Kathmandu, May 16, 2018: Asia-Pacific Peace and Development Service Alliance (APPDSA) 2 days forum on Forum on “Smart and Green Cities Equipping Youth Social Enterprise to Achieve SDG” on May 14-15 organized by Global Peace Foundation, Global Young Leaders Academy and IBM at BougainVilla, Tripureshwor, Kathmandu.
The program aimed to bring various organizational level dignitaries for discussions on Smart and Green Cities equipping youth social enterprise that helps to achieve sustainable development goals. On this occasion, more than 300 individuals (presenter and participants) representing various organizations participated and got insights in the healthy discussions as per their interest.
The first day of the conference was focused on leadership development of youth where they got oriented about moral and innovative leadership for sustainable development by the team of Global Peace Foundation Nepal and Global Youth Leaders Academy added with the independent sessions run by experts from IBM on the topics: ICT for Smart Cities and Emerging technologies, coding and resources for coders.
The second day of the program had 4 extensive sessions: opening session, plenary session, working session and valedictory session. The sessions brought experts, mayors and deputy mayors to express their views on SMART and Green Cities especially focusing youth perspective. The panelists /moderators were the representatives from the government, national and international arena working on SMART Cities and the field of SDGs. The themes of plenary sessions were Building Smart Sustainable Cities Together and Toward the Smart Sustainable Cities Together. This session rendered the sharing and networking of Mayors and Deputy Mayors of the metropolitan cities, district and administrative headquarters by bringing them together to discuss the current scenario, challenges and way forward on the use of ICT in urban planning, Strategies and Plans for SMART and Green Cities in Nepal etc. Similarly, the working session covered four areas such as: ICT for Smart Cities Workshop, Innovative Solutions for Sustainable Cities, Fostering collaboration amongst Government Agencies and Private Sector & Smart Buildings and Urban Planning.
The sessions of the 2 days program were designed to equip the youth to transition their learning associated with enhancing individual leadership capacity to group/team innovation capacity and further extend it into open innovation environments. The goal of workshop was to facilitate the youth to unleash their strengths and discover what they are good at and how to leverage on them a fulfilled life. Furthermore, 5 interested participants will get a chance to apply for CG Foundation’s Social Business Incubation Program which will run for 2 months in collaboration with GPF Nepal, CG Foundation and Blue Waste to Value.
Mr. Ram Rohan Panta, President of Global Peace Foundation Nepal, welcomed everyone and highlighted the objectives of the Leadership Workshop and Youth Forum on Smart and Green City to achieve SDGs-2018. “Youths are the real owners of APPDSA and that’s our greatest motivation to organize youth forums like this, Panta said. Similarly, Senior Program Manager Rebecca E. Curzon of IBM Corporate Citizenship defined different forms of transformation. She said, “Transformation may be a slow process when fresh ideas turn into realization, action and seizing of opportunities.”
On the second day of the conference, Executive Chairman of National Youth Council Mr. Madhav Dhungel expressed his hopes of tech savvy young generation who are responsible for establishment of Smart and Green City. Likewise, Minister of Youth and Sports Mr. Jagat Bahadur Sunar focused on youth’s development and opportunity creation. “Youths of Nepal should be moral, ethical, disciplined and social service oriented. We need to make the youths of country skillful and mobilize them if we aim to make Nepal prosperous and developed”, he said.
‘Asia-Pacific Peace and Development Service Alliance (APPDSA) is the outcome of initiation of the forum of 300 young leaders of Asia and the Pacific-and other participants at the United Nations Conference Centre (UNCC) in Bangkok on 28 October 2014, including representatives of national and the private sector for lively debates and discussion on many challenges in clusters concerning the environment, health service, disaster, culture of peace and youth entrepreneurship.
