About YIGF

Youth IGF 2019

Youth is the largest demographic group of internet users. However, their voices are less heard in decision making processes related to the internet. With a dedication to raise the awareness of youth on internet governance and encourage young generations to participate in public policy discussion, Youth Internet Governance Forum (YIGF) has been initiated and is an integral part of Asia Pacific Regional Internet Governance Forum (APrIGF) since its inception in 2010.

What is Youth IGF?

Organized and facilitated by NetMission.Asia, the Youth IGF occurs in conjunction with the APrIGF annually, to raise the awareness and build the capacity for youth to join the Internet governance discussions. Based on the mandate of IGF to bring people together from various stakeholder groups as equals, YIGF provides an open platform for young generation to express and interchange their ideas and own thoughts on internet governance freely.

YIGF is usually a 4-days-3 nights camp which participants are assigned a role as one of the interest group such as government, private sectors and civil society organizations. During the camp, they are encouraged to think from a new standpoint and different perspectives. It also serves as a preparation camp for them to understand various internet issues as well as further directly participating in the local and global internet policy discussion platform.

Meanwhile, one of the core features of the Youth IGF is that the facilitators are all youth themselves, which signifies the empowerment of youth as well as the peer-to-peer impact.

Objectives

• Build the capacity of young adults to participate in internet governance discussion
• Encourage youth to attend and bring contribution to actual internet governance discussion
• Provide platform for cultivating idea to drive social change and further actualizing the initiative for a healthy and harmonious internet
• Develop youth network on internet governance

Key Feature – Role-Play Discussion

All youth participants will be assigned to different stakeholder groups for example Civil Society, Private Sectors, Governments, etc. for the discussion of various internet governance issues. The aim of this simulation session is to let the youth to put themselves into other people’s shoes and encourage them to think from a multi-stakeholder perspective.

After experiencing multi-stakeholder perspective of thinking in role-play discussion, preparatory session will be organized to discuss some of the APrIGF workshop’s discussion topics from youth perspective. While the best way of practice is by actual participation, yIGF participants will attend APrIGF workshops and sit as panelists to share their discussion outcomes after preparatory session, that youth can bring contribution to actual Internet governance discussion in APrIGF.

Eligibility: Undergraduate or Graduate students in tertiary education and available for the entire camp with full attendance