Youth audience is in constant focus of communications strategy which includes a wide variety of youth targeted activities and events. The capacities and facilities of a Public Information Center (PIC) are widely used for raising young people’s awareness about development in general and the World Bank in particular. The events arranged for youth include: Country manager’s meetings and lecturing to the students, learning events and presentations in the universities, contests and competitions, PIC visits and other events.

This year the participants included the activists of the Fund Forum of Uzbekistan and «Kelajak ovozi» Youth Initiatives Centre . The Center was founded by winners of various youth projects of the Fund Forum in March, 2006 and became one of the leading youth organizations in Uzbekistan. A uniqueness of the Centre is that initiatives and projects of young people are created and implemented by participants themselves.

The agenda of the Open House was developed so that young people could learn, share, discuss and have fun and included a number of other activities. Loup Brefort, the World Bank Country Manager of Uzbekistan gave an overview of the World Bank activities in Uzbekistan. The event gave the young people an opportunity to learn more about the World Bank’s youth focused activities in Uzbekistan, interact with various staff members, and ask questions. The information on the World Bank resources for youth was met with great interest.

The presentation of the WDR 2010 made by Simon Croxton, Senior Specialist on Climate Change, was video-conferenced from Almaty. Facilitated via video-link, the questions and answers session gave an opportunity to meet peers in other Central Asia countries Tajikistan, Kyrgyz Republic and Kazakhstan.

Questions and answers session brought the young people to the idea to come up together once again to discuss climate change issues.

The reports made by young people representing Youth, Development, Peace (YDP) network were met with great interest. The young people were impressed by the small projects implemented by their YDP network peers. Among them are: Teaching visually impaired people to use PC, Internet and other ICTs – Project implemented by YDP members jointly with the volunteers of the Center for young politologists; planting trees in Zarafshan reserve area – the project implemented by YDP members jointly with the Youth ecological movement of Uzbekistan. A lot of new ideas were discussed and probably will be implemented in future.