The big meeting

Today was our first big youth council meeting. We’ve had regular meetings on Skype for a while now, but it’s not the same as seeing everyone. We met at UNA HQ in London - a very impressive building – and discussed our plans for the year.

The UNA staff were friendly and spoke to us about lots of exciting opportunities for the year ahead. We had loads to discuss, so when we had to leave the building at six we moved to a nearby café and carried on.

We decided that Nuclear Non-Proliferation should be one of our main campaigns this year (we’ll be sending out a campaigns survey to members shortly to see which other issues they’d most like to campaign on). UNA-UK are keen on campaigning on Nuclear Non-proliferation and WFUNA Youth (the world organisation of United Nations Youth organisations) are running a campaigns competition with the chance to present a campaign plan to a UN conference in Mexico.

There is a real mood for reducing the number of nuclear arms around the world. In his Prague speech earlier this year, President Obama called for a nuclear free world. Since then there have been signals that the US and Russia are working on an agreement to seriously reduce their nuclear stockpiles. However, it certainly won’t be easy - North Korea tested Nuclear weapons this year and there are concerns over Iran’s nuclear programme.

It was a long day and I got back pretty late. I managed to jot down a few ideas for events and posters. Things kept popping up in my head – it was difficult to get to sleep.