World Heritage Volunteers 2015 Action Camps welcome the International Youth Day on 12 August

On the occasion of International Youth Day, over ten Action Camps will be carried on in the framework of the World Heritage Volunteers 2015 campaign. Most of these Action Camps are  led youth from all around the world. This year, the theme of International Youth Day is Youth Civic Engagement.

World Heritage Volunteers (WHV) campaign for 2015 seeks to mobilize and involve young people and youth organizations in the process of World Heritage preservation and promotion. The Action Camps are held in the field and in direct relation to a World Heritage site or a property in the country’s Tentative List. They provide young volunteers with the opportunity to carry out concrete action with local communities on issues related to World Heritage. Generally two weeks in duration, Action Camps include information sessions, workshops and practical hands-on activities with local youth organizations, NGOs, schools, universities and public and private institutions.

Some examples of hands-on activities in 2015 are the photo story to be published on social media about Kathmandu Durbar Square in Nepal. Its purpose is to  disseminate a message of heritage conservation. In the Modern Capital and Historic City of Rabat, World Heritage site, in Morocco, participants will take part in cultural visits and run a campaign to sensitize local people about the importance of heritage conservation. Volunteers in Mexico will help to restore and clean the World Heritage site of the Earliest 16th-Century Monasteries on the Slopes of Popocatepetl and will participate in training activities on basic preventive preservation techniques in the Pre-Hispanic city of Teotihuacan, also on the World Heritage List. These and other examples are strongly related with Youth Civic Engagement, the theme of the International Youth Day 2015.

The 2015 WHV  campaign addresses the theme “Patrimonito takes a stand in a changing global environment” and consists of 52 Action Camps organized at 50 sites in 34 countries involving 46 organizations, between May and November 2015. Among these, 10 Action Camps will be active during International Youth Day on 12 August. Youth Day is an extraordinary opportunity to promote the role of young people in helping communities preserve our common heritage at the local level.

Last but not least, World Heritage Volunteers 2015 provides a significant contribution to the global social media campaign #Unite4Heritage through a Common Action initiative.eight young people from the Arab region were selected to participate in some Youth Action Camps, in sites such as the Rice Terraces in the Philippines, the Rainforests of the Atsinanana in Madagascar, the Bwindi Impenetrable National Park in Uganda and the Prambanan Temple Compunds in Indonesia.

The following list of Youth Action Camps will be active during the International Youth Day 2015