Hello everyone. I hope you are all safe and well. I wanted to let you know about a project we are starting and find out if you would like to be invoved in some way.

For sometime now UNESCO has been working with the National University of Ireland Galway and Penn State on a porgram called youth as researchers (YAR). In this program young people are trained and supported to conduct research on social issues. This was done largley in Ireland and the US but over the last 2 years we partnered to bring this project to Viet Nam. With an amaing group off young people from across Viet Nam, six research projects were completed looking at various things from how young people with disabilities fare in the education system, the aspirations of sex workers about their future livelhihoods, to how young people can be politically active.

With the global COVID-19 pandemic, we are setting up research clusters around the world to be trained and conduct online research on the impact of COVID on youth well-being. In the next few days we will release a survey to enable young people to be involved in planning the research. We are developing online training modules adapting the YAR methodology, and soon we will call for volunteer researchers. The program is entirely voluntary and researchers from NUIG and PS as well as others will be supporting and mentoring the youth researchers.

Iff you would like to get involved, or just want to use this as an occassion for this group to start discussions, please let me know.

warm regards to all

Sue