Foreword

Dear Friend and User!

This year. we were 18 girls and 17 boys, aged from 12 to 25 years, Leaders-Students-Animators (LEA) from EVF Clubs, to take part in the EPD-Youth-Solidarity summer camp, an initiative from UNESCO and the Group for research and development on population and education (Groupe pour l'Etude et l'Enseignement de la Population/GEEP). This initiative represents a continuity of the activities of EVF Clubs. It shows the exchange possibilities between young from rural and urban areas and allows to appreciate the flexibility of rural people regarding issues on population, environment and development for a sustainable development through awareness activities, social mobilization and communities actions (reafforestation, latrine construction, etc..;).

The originality of the 1998 summer camp organized in Palmarin, a village located 132 km from Dakar, with the support of UNESCO, is the development of an EPD manual, dedicated to you who are willing to know and understand in order to take decisions and act willingly for a sustainable development.

We intended this as a self-instructional manual. This is why we have chosen dialogues, messages and comic-strips followed by questionnaires to help its use.

Dear Friend and User, for a good use of this manual, we have chosen a progression to allow you to understand what is EPD, its importance and appreciate the fields it covers and to master its approach.

Each section contains two parts: one made of dialogue, messages or comic strips and a second one on practice.

In the first part of each section, there are two products with a similar function. You may work on one or the other or both. In case this manual is used for group work, we would recommend that you "dramatize" the dialogues by picking up within the group a boy and a girl to act the parts: it would make it livelier and easier to use.

Our intention is to share with you, through the manual, our EPD experience in order to allow you to have a global and systematic vision of the problems you may have to face and to be ready to decide, to act efficiently, and when necessary to change your attitude.

Our thanks go to those who have shown such great trust on us: UNESCO and GEEP. A special mention should be made of the experts from these two organisations who supervised our practical activities. We were allowed all the leeway we needed while the helped us to fashion a tool which, we are confident, will stand the test of time.