KATHMANDU, AUGUST 4 The National Youth Council has planned week-long celebrations to mark this year’s International Youth Day. Council’s Executive Vicechair Madhav Prasad Dhungel informed about this at a virtual press meet here today. Several programmes have been scheduled for a week on the occasion of the day and the celebrations will be focused on developing leadership capacity among youths, according to Dhungel. August 12 every year has been observed as the International Youth Day since 2000, as per the United Nations’ 1999 proclamation. The theme of the event for this year is “Youth Engagement for Global Action”. A 201-member main celebration committee has been formed under the convenorship of Youth and Sports Minister Jagat Bahadur Bishwakarma and a nine-member secretariat coordinated by Executive Vice-chair Dhungel has been constituted to celebrate the event. United Nations representative and office bearers from youth organisations in China, India, Sri-Lanka and Bangladesh will be addressing the main-day of the week-long event, said the council’s Information Officer Dhruba Raj Poudel. Talk shows on the topics ‘Sustainable Development and Youth’ and ‘Youth, Politics and Employment’ will be held on the occasion. A cultural show by national artistes, essay writing competition, blood donation programme (Chabahil and Kalanki), tree transplantation (Suryabinayak), food offering programme (Chagunarayan), and orientation programme on COVID-19 for volunteers are some of the activities to be carried out during the weeklong celebrations, according to the Information Officer Poudel. A version of this article appears in e-paper on August 5, 2020, of The Himalayan Times.