Dear friends, warm greeting from the World Assembly of Youth (WAY) headquarter! The World Assembly of Youth is currently compiling its 2009 calendar of events. We would like to invite national youth councils, youth organisations, ministries responsible for youth, regional and international youth bodies, as well as intergovernmental bodies to email us details of your programmes and activities for the year 2009, to be consolidated with our calendar.

We are pleased to announce that the Report of the Secretary-General, Implementation of the World Programme of Action for Youth: progress and constraints with respect to the well-being of youth and their role in civil society , is now available on our website (www.un.org/youth). In the annexes you will find the final goals and targets for the clusters "youth and their well-being" and "youth in civil society".

With some 1.5 billion young people between the ages of 12 and 24 in the world, youth represent a tremendous opportunity to accelerate economic growth and reduce poverty worldwide. There has never been a better time to focus on young people. Young people are healthier and better educated than previous generations and they will join the workforce with fewer dependents because of changing demographics. It is proven that developing countries which invest in better education, healthcare, and job training of young people between the ages of 12 and 24 years of age could produce surging economic growth and sharply reduced poverty.

Nigeria, 20 November 2008 - Frontline media administrator, youth leader and one time General Manager of Daily Times, Chief Olu Fadairo (MON) is dead. He was aged 78. Fadairo, former chairman, Board of Directors of the Ogun State Broadcasting/ Television Corporation (OGBC/OGTV), now Gateway Radio and Gateway Television respectively as well as the first secretary of the Institute of Directors (IOD), died at his Surulere, Lagos residence on Sunday, November 16.

You, Your Life, Your Dreams is a book that helps young people make informed decisions about their sexual lives. Easy to read and visually attractive, it provides accessible, objective, and urgently-needed information on a broad range of sexual and reproductive health issues. Designed for young people and for educators who work with them, the manual was originally conceived for use in English-speaking Africa, and is now being distributed in three languages and four different versions reflecting the regional contexts and the unique challenges facing adolescents in Sub-Saharan Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean. Download Part I, Part II, Part III for the English- speaking Caribbean

Youth Coalition is an international organization of young people (ages 15-29 years) committed to promoting adolescent and youth sexual and reproductive rights at the national, regional and international levels. We are students, researchers, lawyers, health care professionals, educators, development workers, and most importantly, we are all dedicated activists.