School kids participate in UN student conference

They discussed a ‘Sustainable Urban Development Action Plan’. The primary gathering happened at UN headquarters at New York (USA) on Monday night (IST) and schools from across the world got connected through video conferencing. 

For about six weeks, students from Omega have been identifying critical problems and challenges faced by urban India in four aspects—eradicating deep poverty, gender equality, supporting mental health and environmental sustainability. The students used their direct experience of lessons learnt from the recent floods in Chennai. 

Then they created a practical action plan, drawing on existing successful examples of how these problems have been tackled in India. This action plan was sent to the student leaders in New York to be added into the combined action plan of all the participating countries. 

Through the night, Omega students carried on discussions with other schools and finalised a consensus plan for presentation to the United Nations Special Envoy for Youth. 

The students will now begin implementing steps from their action plan, for example, volunteering with local effective non-governmental organisations (NGOs), raising funds for girl child education, and developing a biodiversity hotspot along the canal that runs beside their school campus.