Spotlight on Youth at African Union Summit

June 29, 2011 - PRLog -- June 28, 2011: Improving opportunities for young people is the theme of the 17th African Union Summit, now taking place in Equatorial Guinea along Africa’s west coast. The meeting, which began on June 23, runs until July 1.

The call to empower Africa’s youth (age 15-35), who make up 60 percent of the continent’s 1 billion people, coincides with broader African Union (AU) goals to create a prosperous and peaceful Africa. The summit also comes during AU’s African Youth Decade (2009-2018).

The African Union recognizes what it calls the “daunting challenges” faced by Africa’s youth, including unemployment and lack of skills, relevant education, and access to health information related to family planning and HIV/AIDS. Most youth don’t have the opportunity to develop their potential and contribute to Africa’s declared goal of “a prosperous Africa at peace with itself and its partners.”

To ready youth to help the continent reach that goal, the AU has an ambitious plan of setting standards and benchmarks for African nations to follow in developing policies and programs that empower youth.

SOS in its Fortieth Year of Helping Africa’s Youth

Now celebrating its 40th year in Africa, SOS Children’s Villages works in 44 countries across the continent to meet the multiple needs of children and youth whose families cannot care for them.

In 1971, SOS opened it's first children's village in Africa in Ivory Coast (Côte d’Ivoire), when the organization built the SOS Children's Village at Abobo-Gare, nine miles outside the city of Abidjan.

The needs of Africa’s children are overwhelming. The story of Sidibe, brought to SOS-Abobo-Gare in 1975 when he was only a few months old, brings home the power of saving children’s lives, one at a time.

Sidibe, who at 35 recalled his life at SOS, remembers attending Sunday mass with his SOS family and finding it “beautiful and calm.” His adjustment to the SOS youth facility he moved to in 1996 went smoothly because the youth house was located within the village. Although he didn’t complete high school due to “my lack of concentration,” at SOS’s urging he attended a training center to learn mechanics. There he earned a mechanics certificate, which led to a job in one of Abidjan’s big companies. Today he loves his work and is proud that it affords him and his family “a decent life.” Speaking of his three children, he says, “Though they are too small to understand, I try to inspire a sense of family, respect for others, and humility in them.”

Sidibe’s hopes for the future? To open a business and help the poor.

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About SOS Children's Villages

For over 60 years, SOS Children's Villages has been providing family-based care for children without parental care and social services for families at risk. For more information about SOS Children's Villages, visit http://www.sos-usa.org.