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A special Speak Africa virtual space (http://cairo.mepemepe.com/) has been set up for exchange of ideas amongst children and youth around the Cairo Plus V meeting. Like the overall Speak Africa strategy, the Speak Africa space is not branded with any agency, NGO or partner logos, and as such is an open forum for partners to contribute, share information and develop an infrastructure that will be easily extensible to other youth events, but more importantly to the SpeakAfrica platform as a whole.

BRIEF UPDATE ON CAIRO PLUS V & SPEAK AFRICA INTERACTIVE WORKSPACE
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Background and Update on Cairo Plus V “Africa Fit For Children” is the Plan of Action adopted by African Leaders during the First Pan African Forum on children and young people held in Cairo, Egypt 2001. “Africa Fit For Children” constitutes Africa's contribution to the UN General Assembly Special Session and the World Fit for Children goals which are in line with the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC).

Ministers responsible for Children from 53 African states as well as UN Agencies and other development partners including NGOs, CSOs and CBOs are currently gathered in Egypt for the Mid-Term Review of the Africa Fit For Children A United Nations General Assembly Special Session (UNGASS) will be held on December 11 & 12 to review progress on the World Fit for Children Goals. As part of the preparation for the meeting there will be a Children's Forum convened in NY on December 9 & 10. Twenty children identified by UNICEF and Save the Children will be represented at UNGASS. Five of the children are from African countries (Benin, DRC, Kenya, Namibia, Somalia) and the overall spokesperson for children/youth for UNGASS will be from Kenya.

Similar to the UNGASS meeting, the 5 main themes of the Cairo Plus V meeting are Child Survival, HIV&AIDS, Basic Education, Child Protection and Child/Youth Participation. One of the stated objectives of the Cairo Forum is to “forge partnership with development partners and CSOs in supporting AU Member States to implement the Plan of Action at national level.” While attending the Cairo Plus V meeting, representatives UNICEF and some of the key CSOs working on the African children and youth agenda (ie. PLAN, Save the Children, CONAFE, ANPPCAN,) met to discuss possibilities for collaborating on and strengthening efforts at child/youth communication and participation.

Speak Africa There was agreement amongst the agencies to work together on the further development of Speak Africa which is a AU-endorsed Pan-African, children and youth media-focused communication strategy and multi-media platform designed to mobilize youth networks and improve opportunities for expression, exchange meaningful participation and development of children and youth.

Speak Africa, which is an initiative supported by a coalition of UN agencies under the umbrella of the UN Economic Commission for Africa was adopted by the African Union in 2006 as a multi-agency initiative to provide a platform for follow-up for the first African Heads of State meeting on Youth (ie. the Fifth African Development Forum (ADF) held in November in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia in 2006 with the theme “Youth Leadership for the 21st Century”). Speak Africa Interactive Workspace A special Speak Africa virtual space () has been set up for exchange of ideas amongst children and youth around the Cairo Plus V meeting. Like the overall Speak Africa strategy, the Speak Africa space is not branded with any agency, NGO or partner logos, and as such is an open forum for partners to contribute, share information and develop an infrastructure that will be easily extensible to other youth events, but more importantly to the SpeakAfrica platform as a whole.

The interactive youth workspace created for Cairo Plus V will eventually become the interactive component of the Speak Africa website which is currently being re-built and very soon to be available to include a wide range of features to expand the reach of the Speak Africa platform.

For the immediate discussion around Cairo Plus V, the intent is to mobilize the following sets of youth:

- Children/Youth that were involved in the Pre-Cairo consultations facilitated by CONAFE AMCA, ANPPCAN and PLAN Int.

- Speak Africa Youth Investigative reporters that were facilitated by UNICEF to produce the video documentary for Cairo Plus V.

- African Youth that have been selected to attend the Special Session: (ie. Ferdinand Totin (Benin), Christelle Binti Lutala (DRC), Millicent Orondo (Kenya), Longeni Matsi (Namibia), Mahd Iman Dubad (Somalia)

- Children/Youth that attended the African Development Forum for Youth ADF V.
Any other youth on the African continent or even in the Diaspora in order to ensure the widest possible engagement and interaction amongst African youth. Organizations having contact with these youth are being asked to forward this message to them AS SOON AS POSSIBLE! Test runs with the Speak Africa interactive workspace will begin from today Monday October 29 while the official launch is being planned for November 1 to coincide with Day of the African Youth. The Speak Africa Interactive workspace () is modeled after the space set up for the J8 conference (the junior G8 conference - ) allows youth participants in the Cairo +5 conference to publish information about the event and allow for inclusion of youth who were not able to physically attend.

The SpeakAfrica workspace is built off of the concept of a “wiki” (like Wikipedia () a Wiki is an environment where anyone can add, edit and contribute information. The SpeakAfrica workspace will be accessible not only during the time that youth participants are at Cairo Plus V, but also afterward. The materials that will be posted, and the discussions to take place on this and other similar platforms are intended to extend outward from the events and strengthen youth movements, ideas and actions to involve a much greater number of youth than those who are physically present at the event.

The SpeakAfrica workspace has been designed to accommodate the following:

QUESTIONS (young people who are not present in Cairo can ask those who are about areas of interest).

DOCUMENTATION (plenary sessions etc. can be documented by participants for future reference, and to ensure that positions that are agreed upon are followed up).

FEEDBACK to other youth (photos, soundbites, etc. can be posted online during and after the session.

CONTINUITY (after returning to their countries, or upon generating interest in countries with no participants, discussion can continue through the workspace environment).

PLEASE SEND OUT THIS MESSAGE TO ALL POSSIBLE YOUTH & YOUTH ORGANIZATIONS & HELP US TO MAKE SPEAK AFRICA SPEAK !!