World Youth Movement for Democracy
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World Youth Movement for Democracy |
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| FAQs About the Global Conference |
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Many people have written us with similar questions and concerns, which we will answer here. If you still have unanswered questions after reading through this information, please send an inquiry. 1) Could you please send more information about the conference? 1) Could you please send more information about the conference? All the conference information is on the website. We will update the site regular with all relevant information about the conference. We do not have any brochures or supplemental materials to send out before the conference day. Please check the site for updates, and if you have a specific unanswered question, send it to us using the feedback form.
The complete registration form is now available online! We do not have registration forms to send you, you must register online. Please do so here. 3) How much will the conference cost? (All prices here are in US dollars. You can use this currency converter to determine the prices in your currency.) There is no fee for participation in conference events, though we are requesting a voluntary donation of $50 to offset our costs of $200 per participant. You can purchase a Welcome Kit (with a bag, printed materials, a certificate, etc.) for $50, and a conference t-shirt for $20. Hotels near the conference cost about $35 per night (including breakfast). We will provide more information about hotel reservations when we have received your flight confirmation. You can choose to have meals at the conference center: $10 for one meal a day for three days, or $20 for two meals a day for three days. A taxi from the airport will cost about $45 each way. During the conference, there will be a free shuttle running between the hotel and the conference facilities. You will have to determine the cost of travel to Sao Paulo yourself. 4) Are you offering scholarships, travel support, financial aide, etc. for participants? Unfortunately, the Youth Movement for Democracy does not have ANY funds available to help conference participants travel to Sao Paulo for the conference, or to cover food and board expenses at the conference. Conference registration is free. We realize that it is very difficult for most of you to afford plane travel to Sao Paulo, and we would like to help as best we can. We do want to help you with fundraising! We will provide a personalized invitation letter if you request one when you register. If you are interested in solidarity housing (free accomodation in someone's home), please consult The Hospitality Club. 5) Do you have suggestions for fundraising? Can you make contacts for me? Right now, we do not have any recommendations beyond what is suggested in the event fundraising guide. I'm sorry, but we cannot make personalized suggestions or connections. If we learn of new opportunities, we will notify you by email and announce them in the guide. 6) Could you please send me an invitation letter? We have prepared a tool to allow you to make your own invitation letters. For visa: www.ymd.youthlink.org/ymd/prep/getinvite.html Simply enter your personal information (exactly as you want it to appear on the final letter) and the date, click "submit" and a letter will appear formatted for printing on A4 paper. If you print on a different size paper, you may need to play with the formatting in Word or another text editing program. I'm sorry, but we cannot send personal invitation letters. For a cleaned-up, printable copy of the conference program to submit with your visa, visit: www.ymd.youthlink.org/ymd/prep/program.html This page has also been formatted to print correctly on A4 paper. Make sure that your browser (the program you use to access the internet) is set to print on A4 paper, and simply print the page directly. Again, if you use a different size of paper, you will have to reformat the page yourself.
7) I would like to make a presentation at the conference. Are you interested? Can you cover my expenses? We are definitely interested in presentations from conference participants! We are currently accepting applications for workshops and presentations. When you register for the conference, please indicate that you are interested in hosting a workshop or presenting a paper, and include detailed information on the content of your presentation. We also invite participants to make informal, even spontaneous, presentations in our open spaces: the Free Space and the Sarau (described in the conference program). Unfortunately, at present we cannot cover expenses for any presenters. 8) Do you have materials in my language? At the conference, we will have translation available between English, Portuguese, and Spanish. If necessary, we will try to find translation into other languages, but we may need to ask participants to contribute toward the expense of hiring translators for languages other than English, Portuguese and Spanish. Currently, the site exists in English, Portuguese, and Spanish (the languages spoken fluently by the secretariat staff) and we in the process of translating it into French. We are looking for volunteers to translate for us! If you are a YMD member who wants to help translate materials into your native language, please let us know!! Until we have the website available in your language, you might try using the Babel Fish translator, which can translate the text of any site when you type the address into "Translate a web page." Whether or not you can do translation, if you know of good resources (like activity guides or great democracy websites) in your language, please send them so we can share them with everyone! 9) Do I have to be under 30 to participate? The guidelines for our essay contest state that authors must have been born after 1975, and thus be 30 or younger, to submit an essay. This doesn't mean, however, that the YMD is closed to people over 30! We welcome everyone interested in issues relevant to youth and democracy, whether you're 5 or 105!! The Movement does have an explicit focus on youth, so resources, news, opportunities, etc should be relevant to this age group, and we seek to have young people make up the bulk of our membership and leadership. However, "youth" is defined differently in different parts of the world: European and US groups often define as under 25, whereas some groups in Africa define it as under 40. Therefore, there is NO AGE LIMIT to the YMD, just a spirit of youth and innovation!
10) Who is organizing this event? The primary organizing body is the Youth Movement for Democracy's Secretariat, based in the South America Regional Headquarters of the Global Youth Action Network. Here is a complete list of conference supporters.
11) Do I need a visa to come to Brazil? Where can I find an Embassy? Citizens of some countries do not need visas to come to Brazil for fewer than 90 days, but most do. If your country is on this list, you do NOT need a visa. Otherwise, you do, and should apply as soon as possible. Even if you don't need a visa, you will need a passport to enter Brazil. To find the embassy nearest you, please consult the website of Brazil's Ministry of Exterior Relations. If there is no consulate or embassy in your area, you may need to travel there, or you might be able to do the application by mail or through a visa service. You will have to contact the embassy directly for this information. We can't answer questions about the particular requirements for your country, what to do if you're a refugee, etc. To answer these questions, you will need to contact the embassy nearest you.
12) Can you send a letter directly to the embassy or funding institution? If you need a letter sent directly from us, please send us the entire text of the letter (you can use the websites mentioned above to prepare this) and the email address of the embassy or agency where we should send the letter. We CANNOT send any letters by mail. Some extra advice about getting your visa:
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