Nadja Wolfe and Lord Pomperada from World Youth Alliance invited me to speak earlier this month at their International Solidarity Forum:

The International Solidarity Forum (ISF) is an annual training event hosted at the World Youth Alliance and United Nations headquarters in New York City. The forum brings together WYA members from around the world and subject matter experts to participate in lectures and discussions on topics relevant to ongoing international policy debates. Previous themes include Sustainable Development, Maternal Health, HIV/AIDs and Good Governance.

This year’s theme was Human Dignity and Bioethics. It was a pleasure presenting with Dr. William Breitbart of Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center. His talk precedes mine, and it’s worth hearing particularly for his development of a “meaning centered psychotherapy” for advanced cancer patients. He touched on the scandal that is the Netherlands policy of legal euthanasia for huge number of people with clinical depression, psychiatric illness, psychotic illness, etc. His “dignity conserving therapy” is compelling:

World Youth Alliance has an incredible purpose, and the members I’ve met seem to be uniformly remarkable people:

WYA works at international institutions such as the United Nations, the European Union, and the Organization of American States, as well as with young people from around the world to build a culture that supports and nurtures the dignity of each human person. We bring young people to international conferences and into dialogue with ambassadors, diplomats, and political leaders.  We focus on: international policy and human rights, economic development, social development, global health, education.

WYA trains young people of every background from every corner of the world in each of these areas, training them to advocate for the human person and develop creative solutions to real world problems.

Afterwards Lord Pomperada presented each of us with a certificate, which was a nice gesture. After lunch I headed to Penn Station, and thankfully my train was one of about half heading south that wasn’t cancelled due to the snow.