Today is the launch date for the UNESCO and CELAJU Youth Portal for Latin America and the Caribbean to help to better link the 22 countries and territories of the Caribbean region and globalize this tool for youth communication.

The coordination team of the Portal chose this date to celebrate World Environment Day emphasizing that young people hold the planet’s future in their hands.

The Portal, in English, aims at the general public, but has a special focus on youth networks, organizations and groups, and people working with youth in Latin America and the Caribbean.

The website is an Internet meeting-place, a network of networks of youth organizations and people working with youth, public and private, national and international, in all subject areas dealing with youth issues in Latin America and the Caribbean.

Building these networks will enhance the website’s sustainability, since it will be nourished by the flow of information provided by existing networks.

The original “Portal de Juventud”, only in Spanish, was inaugurated on 12 August 2005 and was dedicated mainly to Latin-American countries. It has already been visited 800,000 times and is being viewed as an extremely useful tool that is filling what until so recently was clearly a knowledge gap. In this second phase, the information from the Caribbean countries and from the rest of the world is presented in English.

The website is sponsored by UNESCO and the following networks: INFOYOUTH, Commonwealth Youth Programme: Caribbean Centre, and Caribbean Community (CARICOM).