International Mountain Day 2011

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2011 International Mountain Day celebration in Utah

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Poster of the 2011 International Mountain Day celebration designed by the UIMF

On December 9, 2011 at the Orem Public Library, Orem UT, students and faculty of Utah Valley University were led by the Utah International Mountain Forum, in celebration of International Mountain Day (IMD). An explanation of what each member has done so far to promote a sustainable way of life during 2011 was given to start off the conference.

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During celebration of International Mountain Day at Orem Public Library

The Utah International Mountain Forum is a coalition of different student-clubs from Utah Valley University, which together with their advisors understand the necessity of having this kind of forum in the world, and especially in mountain regions of the United States as a platform to jointly pursue the goals of the sustainable mountain development. This year, marked only the second annual celebration in the history of the state of Utah, by organizing different events dedicated to the mountains and summarizing results on December 11^th as it was designated by the United Nations.

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Poster of the 2011 International Mountain Day celebration designed by the Orem Public Library

The event was opened by Dr. Rusty Butler, Associate Vice-President of International Affairs and diplomacy at Utah Valley University, a focal point for U.N.-related Mountain Partnership (MP) at UVU. He was the first to involve UVU in the U.N.-related sustainable mountain development (SMD) agenda, when the university joined MP in 2006. He spoke both about the role of a green economy for SMD, which was a focus of this years activities for the IMD. He also talked about UVU cooperation with such partners, as International University of Kyrgyzstan (IUK) in particular in promoting sustainability in mountain life. Representative of IUK, Dr. Pierre Padiukov, joined him via Skype. Participants were also greeted by Mayors of Orem and Provo cities and Candra Day, President of NGO Vista 360⁰, from Jackson, WY, all of them are also members of the MP.

For students and faculty of UVU the highlight of activities during 2011 was the second international conference celebrating Women of the Mountains, hosted by UVU on March 8-9, 2011. It strengthened a regional approach in promotion of SMD in the Rocky Mountains and gathered 13 members of MP from North America, including diplomats and scholars from both the region and overseas in addition to the representatives of regional hubs of MP from Central Asia and Latin America and members of the secretariat of MP from Rome, Italy. The conference made special emphasis on the involvement of more than 60 UVU students in organizing the gathering and it helped to raise awareness about the mountain agenda among many representatives of a new generation of leaders. Many of those students co-hosted a state-wide High School Essay Contest workshop to write essays on gender issues on March 7^th, 2011, one day before the Conference. All participants of the workshop were awarded with special certificates signed by the organizing Committee and secretary of the MP in Rome. As a result of that, students from UVU decided to create the Utah International Mountain Forum (UIMF), comprised from several UVU students clubs.

During the round table, the first to talk was Professor Sara Ulloa, from the Language Department at UVU and advisor of the sustainable mountain development club, one of the members of the UIMF coalition. She assists students from her club to focus activities on cooperation of UVU with Latin America in a similar way, as UVU does with the Central Asian mountain communities. She discussed the service-learning project, which took place in Peru during December 2010, when several UVU students travelled to Peru to work with the poorest mountain communities there. They had a great experience not only for themselves, but also for the Peruvian people they shared Christmas with. She shared plans for 2012 which include a new trip to Peru and organizing an international workshop on gender issues as it was envisioned by the second international Conference Women of the Mountains.

Professor Keith Snedegar of the History and Political Science Department at UVU, and advisor to the SMD club, whose main focus is to assist the students’ clubs to focus on Africa, was the next to speak. He gave a presentation about the 2011 High School Essay Contest, which he organized with students before the Women of the Mountains Conference. In this contest, 54 students from 6 local schools responded to the state-wide distributed call for papers and made their presentations by competing for the first place prize of $500. From them, 12 finalists were selected and they competed for final awards by giving a short presentation about their work. He also announced initiatives related to students internships in Africa, and that the second High School Essay Contest will take place in March 2012 with a focus on the Mountain Sustainable Energy.

The presentation of Dr. David Connolly was important from two points of view: first as an opinion of an administrator, who spoke to the audience about the strong support that the Political Science department of UVU has given since 2006 and continue to do so to the initiative on promoting mountain development through students involvement; second, as an expert on sustainable development in rural areas, he expressed his own scholarly interest to promote SMD-agenda and talked about the significant decline of living conditions in rural areas in the United States.

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John McClure, Co-President, Utah International Mountain Forum, talks about major

results of students activities to promote mountain agenda during 2011

As a highlight of the conference, the audience had a chance to listen to the presentations from the UVU students who are actively involved with this forum. Co-presidents of the UIMF, John McClure, Chris Heaton, Covi King, and Reynaldo Benitez summarized the results of a number of activities in which they were directly involved in by either co-organizing them or initiating and hosting them on their own, in addition to their efforts in hosting the second international conference of the Women of the mountains, a program about advocacy among the institutions in Utah to join the MP. This resulted in an acceptance by the MP secretariat of 7 new members from the state with the most recent one – city of Provo in August 2011. Here they highlighted some of the major events of the forum, including raising money for Japan after the tsunami in May, for which they raised $2,000 and sent to the survivors as a part of the MP efforts. The group also hosted a number of international conferences with VIP-guests like the U.S. Ambassador to Kyrgyzstan (2000-2002) John O’Keefe, Iraqi Ambassador to the U.N. Al-Batayi, Uzbek Ambassador to the U.N. Murad Askarov, and deputy chief of mission of Afghanistan to the U.N. Ahmad Zahir Faqiri, among others. At these conferences they discussed plans for the next year, with a goal for the state of Utah to join the MP and their desire to go to Brazil to the RIO+20 summit in particular. They were very excited to have the opportunity to assist in crafting the SMD-agenda of the United Nations in the region and also to talk, share opinion, and work directly with many VIPs, including ambassadors of foreign countries, which helped them to gain more professional experience and have a better idea about the mountain situation in other parts of the world.

A round table was moderated by Dr. Baktybek Abdrisaev, lecturer from the History and Political Science Department and advisor of the foreign affairs club of UVU, as well as one of the members of the UIMF coalition, who assists to focus students clubs activities on cooperation with Central Asian mountain nations.

During an additional panel, which was focused on networking among the people in the audience, UVU students, Jordan Gilles and Victoria presented a newly created web-site and blog of the UIMF: http://utinternationalmountainforum.blogspot.com/ which will contain information about all major activities during 2011 and ongoing events as well.

Finally we had the chance to enjoy a concert and international fashion show to end the evening. The concert was put on by two members of the very talented Keller family, who are natives of Orem city and also very passionate about mountains. Typically the whole family performs on different instruments, but during this event we were pleasured to have the company of Christina, who is just 25 years old, and her brother, Nathan, who both performed several songs about mountains and forests on the banjo and mandolin. Their performance was really quite spectacular and all members of the audience could really see how much they love what they do. As for the international fashion show, we were pleased to have international several beautiful young women, representing different mountain nations, including Miss United Nations 2010 of UVU. It was not only interesting to see, but also entertaining to watch as each representative proudly walked across the catwalk modeling off her countries native clothing.

All in all, the event was exceptional, highlighting the importance of working to promote the mountain communities in the world. It also demonstrates that when young people (students) put their minds and visions together, they can oganize events of high quality all while collaborating at the same time with the local and global community.

Matthew Biesinger, VP Administration UVU Pre-Law Club, member Model of the U.N Club at UVU and Jesler Molina, President, Model of the U.N. Club at UVU

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GREETINGS FROM PARTNERING INSTITUTIONS

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International University of Kyrgyzstan City of Orem Provo City

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UVU PRESS RELEASE

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UVU Student Clubs To Celebrate United Nations’ International Mountain Day

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PHOTOS FROM THE EVENT

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Event Pictures on the Facebook