Pre-Games Congress proposed

Press, Volume CXII, Issue 32879, 30 March 1972, Page 17

Pre-Games Congress proposed

The holding of the Commonwealth Games in Christchurch in 1974 has prompted the Canterbury Regional Youth Council to sound out the idea of holding a Commonwealth Youth Congress in Christchurch immediately before the Games.

The congress would be organised by a special commit-) tee in Christchurch, with the backing of the National Youth Council and the cooperation of the Commonwealth Games Organising

Committee, which has a [youth sub-committee. An executive meeting of the Canterbury Regional I Youth Council decided to prepare a report for consideration at the council’s .-.nnual meeting on April 18. The report, prepared for the council by the actingconvener (Mr D. Thomas), says that the Commonwealth Games provides a unique opportunity for such a congress.

Group travel concessions and charter flights, plus the attraction of delegates attending the Games, should make the congress attractive, says the report. Topics in the programme would be Commonwealth relations, trade and economic expansion, aid, youth travel and exchange schemes, facets of youth service work, cultural exchange programmes, human values, the contribution of youth and the future of the Commonwealth. The Commonwealth would be dramatically altered when Britain entered the European Economic Community. As the inheritors of the vestiges of Commonwealth, it was for youth to work out the future role of the Commonwealth as a group of nations with common ties and a common heritage, says the report. Every member nation of the Comomnwealth would be invited to send a delegation of two persons, preferably one of each sex, between the ages of 18 and 30.