Empower 2015, hosted by Reach Out To Asia (Rota), a member of Qatar Foundation, has inspired young leaders across the Middle East and Asia to make a difference in their communities by urging for peace in the midst of turbulent times across the region.
At the close of the conference, youth delegates announced the formation of a special task force to give young people a more prominent voice in building ‘peaceful and inclusive societies for sustainable development’ across the region. The task force of 20 youth leaders convened a special session to begin identifying a list of recommendations that support the Post-2015 Development Agenda of the United Nations.
It included those objectives related to youth, access to education and promoting peace. The recommendations of the task force will be the cornerstone of a Global Advocacy Campaign that will seek to create links with key youth forums, conferences and meetings around the world including the World Humanitarian Youth Summit, which Doha will host in September 2015.
#EMPOWER2015, EMPOWER’s official Twitter hashtag, became the number one trending topic in Qatar, with an online conversation generating around 12,000 tweets by young people from the Middle East, North Africa, Europe, Asia and North America who came to Doha for the event. The hashtag also ranked among top Twitter trends worldwide.
The event supported QF’s commitment to building strong, sustainable communities in Qatar and the region.  Empower 2015 was held at the Hamad Bin Khalifa University Student Centre in Education City from 12-14 March and was held under the auspices of HE Sheikha Al Mayassa bint Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani, chairperson of Rota.
Empower 2015, organised and led entirely by young people for young people,  gathered up to 450 youth leaders between the ages of 16-27 from Saudi Arabia, UAE, Oman, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, Turkey, Tunisia, Libya, Algeria, Egypt, Cambodia, Malaysia, Azerbaijan, UK, Netherlands, Greece, Ethiopia, Canada, US, Kirgizstan, Bolivia and Sri Lanka.
The three-day conference aimed at giving young people a voice and empower them with the skills, knowledge, values and ethics needed to move their communities toward realising the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals related to peaceful societies and education. In February, Empower’s Youth Planning Committee unveiled ‘Peaceful Societies’ as the theme of this year’s summit. This theme pervaded each of the summit’s three core segments: personal leadership, service learning and global citizenship.



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