Finally, we have come to the end of the ASEAN Power Shift conference. Time flew by really quickly and before knowing it, it was time to leave Singapore to return home. Despite the short period of time, delegates and participants certainly took away a handful of knowledge and experience that would be useful in their future undertakings. Presenting you a write up of the last day by Rachel Loh
This is not Goodbye
As the last day of APS dawned upon us, the sense of urgency to complete our youth position paper was at its peak. We began the day discussing every aspect of the drafted position paper within the Malaysian Youth Delegation, just like “picking fleas off dogs” as our team member, Thomas would have put it. We went through the entire paper, discussed and nitpicked on every single detail to ensure that all the clauses were acceptable.
Once everything was agreed upon within our group, we returned to the conference room to begin our working assembly with the rest of the delegations. We spent most of our time making amendments to the clauses. Since it was a collaborative position paper to represent the voices of youths all around ASEAN countries, it was of utmost importance for all delegations to come to a consensus with the clauses in the position paper. We were really hopeful to have the paper completed by the end of the session but even at our full efficiency we only managed to discuss some portions of our paper. Nevertheless, we thought that it was important to focus on quality over quantity. Seeing that there will be opportunity to finish our paper in the near future, we looked forward to contributing our time and effort and meeting our ASEAN friends again. It was truly wonderful to see how passionate and strong-willed many of the delegates were to complete this regional position paper.
Finally, we concluded ASEAN Power Shift 2015 with the ASEAN Cultural Appreciation Night where delegations performed and entertained everyone with their very professional dancing skills. After a night of dancing away, we left for home not just with a greater understanding of policy making but also of ourselves and each other. We would like to take this opportunity to thank the organizers, volunteers, delegates and participants for making our experience such a fruitful one and we hope to see you in the near future!
#MYD15 – Malaysian Youth Delegation – Malaysian youth climate movement at international United Nations climate conferences, UNFCCC, participants will be mentored and hold engagements with various climate expert bodies and dialogue with Malaysian policy makers and negotiators.
#ASEANPOWERSHIFT – A conference gathering youths from 10 ASEAN countries with the focus on finding pragmatic and possible solutions to tackle climate change and empower youths with creative skills and knowledge to initiate their own actions.
