ESF Sixth Form Leadership Conference

It has been suggested by many members of the ESF community – teachers, students and parents alike – that there should be an ESF Student Council to unite students from all six secondary schools. However, instead of having one group of students to setup the Council and call meetings independently, I believe that it would be better if current student leaders from these secondary schools meet and establish the Council together. To achieve this, I decided to introduce a two-day ESF Sixth Form Leadership Conference in which we will bring together five Year 12 and 13 student leaders and one teacher representative from each ESF secondary school to attend.

Along with five other sixth-form students from Island School including Deputy Head Boy Thomas Stansfeld, Ella Fung, Alicia Mou, Vinay Dayaram and Charity Yan, with the support from the Island School Senior Leadership Team and the ESF, we have begun organising this conference.

As a result of the conference, we hope to:

1. Raise awareness within the ESF secondary schools about the idea of ‘Student Voice’;
2. Create a network between student leadership teams from each schools;
3. Discuss and set up an ESF Student Council.

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What do you think? Any suggestions/ideas?

Two Weeks ...

It's been two weeks since the Road To Davos yet exchanges between all 60 of us - made possible by modern technology namely Facebook and MSN Messenger - are still continuing non-stop and I receive literally endless emails from the group everyday!

Davos 6
First of all, credits must go to the Davos 6 (http://www.roadtodavos.net/roadtodavos/site/the_davos_6/) for doing an amazing job at Davos on Thursday. See below. When I say amazing - not only do I mean that they performed well in the sense that they were great presenters, public speakers etc. but they did a great job in representing the 54 of us. They often referred back to us while on the panel and they incorporated many of our ideas into their speeches so a BIG THANK YOU to the 6!


The Reunion Event
Secondly - as I've said - at the moment we are planning a Reunion. But it is not going to be as simple as just another "reunion" event where people look at photos and talk about how much they've missed each other. We've done all these things on Facebook so we are actually planning a fruitful and productive reunion - not just for the 60 of us but for the wider community. We will be contacting sponsors (and thanks to the Davos 6, we have got a few contacts already but we need more!), we will be exchanging ideas on what we've done since we got back home (and how much have we done towards reaching our personal challenges) and at the moment, Mahar from Palestine has come up with an idea of having this event in a less developed country so that while we're there - we can meet with local leaders, local citizens, local youth activists etc. etc.

My personal challenge - what have I done?
To reach my goal of further promoting Student Voice - I have contacted members of the ESF headquarters and the British Council Hong Kong asking what they think of the idea of an ESF Sixth Form Leadership Conference. I am now putting together a team of Sixth Form students at Island School to organise the event and I am glad that the school is very supportive in this idea. Secondly, it looks like the British Council is going to organise an interview with the SCMP (the main English newspaper in Hong Kong) for me so that I can share my experience at Guildford with the community as well as promoting Global Youth Activism and the Student Voice idea. At the moment, this is yet to be confirmed but hopefully it will happen soon.

Thank you...
Once again for visiting my blog. I am not sure how many people still come visit it but it really encourages me to continue when people come up to me and say "I really enjoyed your blog!" or sth. like that. I will make sure that I update the progress of Guildford 60 as well as that of my own from time to time.

We will we will CHANGE you

Road To Davos - Media Coverage

Check this out!

http://www.bsn.org.uk/view_all.php?id=13673

The future...

Ok - I just woke up from a 24-hr sleep!

Anyway, before I am off to revision I think I need to talk about this blog. I have decided to keep this blog - I won't update it everyday like the past week but I will aim to update it from time to time so if you are interested, come back once a week to check it out!

So what will the blog be about?

On the last day of the Road To Davos, we were asked to come up with a few challenges for ourselves and my main challenge was the promotion of Student Voice in Hong Kong by working with the British Council and ESF. I therefore hope to use this blog as my "Activism Blog" and will use it to record what I've been doing.

The sixty of us have agreed that we need a reunion soon so perhaps I can keep this blog all the way till the next reunion event (hopefully within 0.5 year) when I can return to the daily updates again!

Once again thanks for checking the blog last week and on my side, I really enjoyed updating it and was extra pleased when I received all those comments. Thanks.

Michael

Day FIVE - its over - NOT

Alright - nope I have not been selected to go to Davos.

I'm in a rush at the moment so not going to explain to the full what happened. But to be honest, yes I was sad and disappointed because I was pretty close to becoming the Final 12 but after thinking for a bit, it doesn't really matter who gets to go because we are all aiming for the same thing - to make a difference.

We just voted for the final 6 and I will now run down to see the results and honestly - all 60 participants (yes including myself!) I believe are competent in going to Davos so whoever those 6 are - they are well-deserved.

I am now proud to tell everyone that I now have friends from 43 different countries in six different continents and that six of my friends went to World Economic Forum.

Anyway - don't worry, the blog doesn't end here but I probably won't update until I get back to Hong Kong (and I have my History exam on Tuesday!!!!!!). Thanks EVERYONE for commenting so far and I will hopefully see you all soon - MISSED YOU ALL A LOT!

Many Thanks.
Michael

P.S. I HAD FUN AND I LEARNT A LOT SO THAT"S ALRIGHT

Day F.O.U.R. - The Video

(This is a pretty long post but it actually reveals EVERYTHING so do take a look!)

Ok - today is Thursday already and it's pretty close to the end of the forum and (if I don't get to go to Davos which seems VERY likely seeing how great all the other participants are) the end of the journey!

However it was a good day.

Before going on to talk about what I did today I think it might be a good idea to outline the way the Davos 6 will be selected. Unlike last year, it's selected individually i.e. we've been able to work with almost everyone else instead of working with just 5 other people, which was the case last year. Basically tomorrow we will be split up into regions and then within each region, we will vote for 2 representatives (after everyone in the region makes a speech) and 12 will be selected. These 12 will then make their speeches in front of the entire group and then at the end, the group will vote for the final 6. This will all happen tomorrow so it will prove to be a great day!

So what did we do today?

Well if you've been reading the previous blogs, you should know that we've been having a lot of training regarding public speaking etc. and today was like the "assessment day". The task was that "imagine you got 3-mins of the BBC World News to pitch your voice, what would you say and how would you present it?" and in groups of 3, we worked together to produce it individually and filming each other. It was great fun and because of the time constraint (10am-3:30pm) - it was very pressurised while exciting - just like The Apprentice and we ended up eating in the conference room where we were working in and was literally running along the corridor to make the deadline! Just got the feedback back (back back haha) and it's pretty good so hopefully I can do the same tomorrow! I will try to put the video on YouTube so that you can take a look at it as well!

At night, we had an option of going shopping at Guildford but I didn't because I chose to stay and dine with the British Ambassador to Switzerland instead(so ya don't expect any souvenirs!). He was an amazing guy (he served us desserts because we were sitting in the inside so it was hard for us to go them ourselves!). We had a great conversation with him as well as some of the other British Council staffs and it was extremely interesting when we started talking about the situation in Russia with British Council - basically Russia wants to kick British Council out due to the worsened USSR-UK relations and they actually arrested the Director of BC Russia yesterday for "drugged driving" but it was claimed that he would be the LAST-PERSON on earth to do such a thing so it was of no surprise that the Russians let him out after an hour when the British Consulate-General arrived to solve the matter.

The UK Ambassador to Swiss was actually the ambassador to China (Beijing and Shanghai) for 10 years when they were about to return Hong Kong so he was telling us how he is actually quite amazed at the limited Chinese infiltration so far and that there was a slight tension on the night of 30th June 1997 when two hours before the changeover, the Chinese PLA demanded to revert a previous promise - which was that the soldiers entering from China would not be armed. Eventually 200 or so were armed and it did scare the Brits for a bit! Anyway ya he was a very nice guy and if I am going to Davos - I will be meeting him again and there will definitely be more stories!

Anyway, in reference to an earlier post - what's my idea?

Ok - as I said the other night, I realised that young activists are facing two major problems - the lack of human resources and financial support. Therefore I am going to put forward the establishment of a Global Activist Fund for Youths. This fund will lobby business leaders in contributing financially, network youth leaders from all over the world, lend money to young leaders aiming to make a difference in their communities and invite political and cultural leaders to support and endorse the fund. I realised that once we have the publicity and name, it's much easier to get people and donations but you kind of need enough people and money in the first place to get publicity so it's like a chick or egg first question. So what happens is once the project starts off - you have to return the money to the fund which means the fund, while gaining money from continuous lobbying of business leaders, will also have money coming back from time to time. Also, last year they suggested to establish a Global Education Fund but recently they had to depend on the World Bank or sth. similar to run it because the youths couldn't manage it themselves. What I suggest is, to prevent a similar problem, the hiring of a professional management team - lawyers, financial managers, MBA holders etc. - to take charge of the fund full-time because it's unrealistic to expect six young people like myself to spend 24-7 on looking after a fund. Having said that, I believe that we will still have to be there at times and make sure that it's going along the right way.

Ok - anyway the above is what I came up with after hearing SO MANY AMAZING ACTIVIST STORIES told by AMAZING ACTIVISTS so if I do get to Davos, it's what I'm going to say.

Alright anyway FINGERS CROSSED for tomorrow's votes and I do hope that I get to go to Davos! There will be a party tomorrow night but I will try my best to skip a dance and come up to my room just to post the result of the votes!

Thanks for all the comments and I am glad that I decided to keep this blog!