International Youth Day

August 12 has been named International Youth Day by the UN, and because yours truly and her siteys are so awesome, we were invited down to Baku to help the UNDPI with their big youth day event.

We hopped on an early morning marsh (Trey had to sit in a stool in the aisle), and got into Baku early afternoon. We headed over to SOS Children’s Village youth house to begin the event.
SOS Children’s Village takes in orphaned children, and while the main village is outside of Baku, a Youth House is in the city for older students. There are also perks for “graduates” of the village, like a resource center in town and continuing guidance. It’s a really great program, and the UNDPI branch of Baku chose them to host the event.

The old PC housing coordinator now works for the UNDPI, and when she heard about our arts camp, called us up and asked us to come down and organize an art project for the students to do, to kick of the event.

We arrived, and immediately got to work. This year’s theme is “Change the World,” and the focus of the last year of programming has been about dialogue and communication. We opened with a discussion about art, what art is, what art styles exist, etc, and also discussed how art can be a form of communication, and can be used as a means to express a difficult or lofty idea.

We gave each kid a square of construction paper, and told them to draw from one of two prompts:
1) What is one small think you can do to change the world?
2) If you could send a message to a world leader, what would you say?

They got to drawing, and it was really inspiring to see the kind of independent ideas they had, and the sheer skill they had in sketching. As they finished, we took each square and compiled them into a quilt of sorts, to hang in the Youth House.

It looked bomb. I drew the middle square based on this year’s logo and theme, and the rest was the kids!

After that, there were speeches and introductions by participating organizations, UNDPI, OSCE, Save the Children, SOS Children’s Village, us (!). Then we went upstairs for a concert prepared by the youth.

There was music and lip-syncing, but what got me most was the dancing. Most Azeri dancing is cultural, and very formulaic. The two pieces we saw were modern, lyrical, and told a story, or dealt with an idea. The first was a young girl in a white dress, and it seemed through the piece she was discovering her identity, and becoming a strong woman. The second presented two girls dressed identically, facing the audience, seemingly mirroring each other. At one point, their lives split, and you can see as one girl chooses a path of study and moral fortitude, while the other gets corrupted by drugs, alcohol and rock and roll (yeah, rock and roll…). At one point in the dance, both girls seemed to be walking and they came to a door. For the one girl, the door opened at a simple turn. For the other, no matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t get it open.

I was really proud we got to be part of this event, and proud to meet such intelligent, creative youth. I have no doubt that any one of these kids will be able to open any door placed in front of them.