WEXFO YOUTH
UTØYA
About the Event
WEXFO Youth, Utøya (WYU) will gather young innovators, activists, and community leaders to highlight how young people locally and globally fight for freedom of expression. We want to ensure that young people’s perspectives, suggestions, and calls for action are clearly expressed and taken into account during WEXFO at Lillehammer in the following days. WYU will be in charge of one of the sessions at World Expression Forum 2023.
On Sunday 21 May, we will arrange a trip for those participants at WEXFO 2023 who want to go to Utøya. They will have the opportunity to meet those attending WYU, in addition to experiencing a day on the island. In the afternoon we change the location for WEXFO Youth at Utøya to Lillehammer and World Expression Forum 2023. They will participate in the congress on Monday, both as audience members and some of them on stage. On Tuesday, they will contribute as professional resources to the Youth People’s Meeting, where they can lead workshops, participate in panels, etc.
WEXFO will:
- be an inspiration internationally, nationally, and locally.
- be a hub, the central international meeting place for everyone who is concerned with freedom of expression.
- influence developments through reports and projects, discussions in the Forum and summary afterwards.
- share experiences, but especially search for best practices for improvement.
- seek cooperation with others to develop offers of Forum gatherings elsewhere as well.
- participate in developing the local cooperation in the region on freedom of expression, with
institutions such as the Norwegian Festival of Litterature , Lillehammer UNESCO City of Litterature and ICORN. - reflect diversity in the work and in the organization.
WEXFO was established as an ideal joint stock company on August 20th2021.
The World Expression Forum takes place annually in Lillehammer, Norway, in May/June. Norway ranks highly on Freedom of Expression indexes. The town of Lillehammer is a UNESCO City of Literature, an ICORN city of refuge for artists at risk and host of the biggest literature festival in Scandinavia. The city, the region (Innlandet) and the country are committed to supporting freedom of expression around the world.
WEXFO wants to inspire progress at all three levels: local, national, and international.