A workshop to validate the document took place yesterday in Yaounde.

The Minister of Youth Affairs and Civic Education, Bidoung Mkpatt has urged youth leaders, national and international partners involved in drawing up the National Youth Plan to come-up with a strategic document that will address challenges faced by youths such as access to education, 0unemployment, illiteracy and the HIV pandemic which is ravaging particularly young people in the country.

Bidoung Mkpatt was speaking yesterday, August 29 in Yaounde as he opened a workshop to validate the Youth Plan and the National Youth Policy. According to the Minister of Youth Affairs, the National Youth Policy defines the global vision of the State with regards to the preoccupations of youths while the Youth Plan on its part is a more practical framework for orientation and harmonisation of actions in favour of youths.

The validation of the National Youth Policy and the Youth Plan the minister noted, constitutes a major step in the 2012 roadmap of the ministry with a vision to make youths more responsible, creative, and dynamic as well as to enhance their capacity towards full participation in developmental issues. The Youth Plan, which is like an operational instrument for the National Youth Policy, seeks to ensure that by 2020, youths, should be living within their full potentials in terms of their capacity and ability to integrate in all social and economic issues for their sustainable participation in nation building.

Under the instruction of the Head of State, yesterday’s meeting was to orientate participants on what the hierarchy wants in line with the Growth and Employment Strategy Paper and the Global Vision of the State towards an emerging country by 2035.