World Summit Youth Award, or WSYA, is an international competition for youth-led projects that bridge the content gap in the emerging Information Society.

About

WSYA is the first global “youth for youth” initiative; promoting best practice in e-content and technological creativity and demonstrating young people’s potential to create digital opportunities. WSYA is not only a showcase to the world for young designers, technologists and e-content creators, it also contributes on a global scale to reducing poverty, protecting the environment, sharing knowledge and empowering marginalized young people.

Online projects may be submitted by all applicants less than 27 years of age in three e-Content categories:

1) Development: Rewards the best online platform for youth centred around issues of poverty reduction, environmental sustainability, social justice, health or peace

2) Creativity

Creativity

Creativity refers to the phenomenon whereby a person creates something new that has some kind of value. What counts as "new" may be in reference to the individual creator, or to the society or domain within which the novelty occurs...

 and Culture

Culture

Culture is a term that has many different inter-related meanings. For example, in 1952, Alfred Kroeber and Clyde Kluckhohn compiled a list of 164 definitions of "culture" in Culture: A Critical Review of Concepts and Definitions...

: Celebrates the most innovative online platform highlighting young people’s potential for producing creative content, promoting multilingualism, creating new contemporary forms of culture and preserving indigenous knowledge and/or traditional culture

3) Community

Community

The term community has two distinct meanings:*a group of interacting people, possibly living in close proximity, and often refers to a group that shares some common values, and is attributed with social cohesion within a shared geographical location, generally in social units larger than a household...

 Engagement: Showcases the most engaging online platform facilitating young people’s participation in global, national or local decision-making processes and sharing news/ideas to empower youth and build community

World Summit Youth Award finalists and category winners will be selected by members of the WSYA Jury. Composed of 8-12 global experts in youth engagement

Youth engagement

Youth engagement is the sentiment young people feel towards a particular person, activity, place or outcome. It has been a focus of youth development, public policy and social change movements for at least forty years.-About:...

, new media and social entrepreneurship

Social entrepreneurship

Social entrepreneurship is the work of social entrepreneurs. A social entrepreneur recognizes a social problem and uses entrepreneurial principles to organize, create and manage a venture to achieve social change . While a business entrepreneur typically measures performance in profit and return, a...

, their creative minds bring diversity of perspectives and know-how to the WSYA.

WSYA is organized within the framework of the United Nations World Summit on the Information Society

World Summit on the Information Society

The World Summit on the Information Society was a pair of United Nations-sponsored conferences about information, communication and, in broad terms, the information society that took place in 2003 in Geneva and in 2005 in Tunis...

 in partnership with the WSIS Youth Caucus and the World Summit Award

World Summit Award

The World Summit Award is a global initiative for selecting and promoting the world's best electronic media and applications. It sees the bridging of the digital divide and narrowing of the "Content Gap" as its overall goal and, as of 2006, involves representatives from 168 countries on each...

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The winners of 2010 include websites like YouthKiAwaaz.com

YouthKiAwaaz.com

YouthKiAwaaz.com is an Indian English-language, youth run news and views blog founded in 2008 with focus on Politics, Society, Environment and more issues. An emerging views platform YouthKiAwaaz.com also runs an online journalism internship program...

, Women's Forum, Social MDGs and more.