While meeting with youth delegates to APEC Voices of the Future from other countries and regions, Yao Xuanyu felt nervous but excited.
Port Moresby is the first destination outside Sichuan province in southwest China, where the 16-year-old middle school student travelled to.
"Everything is new to me," said the girl from Mianning Middle School, flushing.
Yao is among the youth delegates to the APEC Voices of the Future, which is a key platform at the annual APEC Summit for the young people from the participating economies to have dialogues.
A Youth Declaration will be drafted after their three-day exchanges from Tuesday to Thursday, which will be reviewed by APECBusiness Advisory Council and the APEC leaders, said Zhongli Junren, head of the Chinese youth delegates.
Fan Yingjie, 26, is one of two Chinese youth delegates involved in the procedure of declaration drafting. He told Xinhua that he sometimes travelled to the impoverished areas in China. "So my proposal to include in the declaration is broader distribution of the benefit of digital development," he said.
Another delegate Jia Zijian is a 23-year-old student in Tsinghua University, majoring in public policy. "What I am interested in is how to achieve common prosperity with the help of technology and education," he said.
Ankush Ajay Wagle with the Institute of South Asian Studies is from Singapore. The 26-year-old researcher believes that the dialogues will change the way they think and the way they do things.
"When in a small place, we all do the same thing," he said. "Then I come to events like this, it is very different. You meet a lot of different people and you will look things in different way," he said.
An example he gave was about a car sharing app in Singapore, with which people going to the same destination could share a car instead of taking public transportation.
"The delegates from PNG keep asking me and say it is a kind of thing that they could try," he said. "It is such an interesting thing. You inspire each other."
His view was shared by Momori Hirabayashi from the University of Tokyo.
"It is an incredible experience," said the 24-year-old girl. "One of the great things of the youth is we are open-minded. In Japan we talk about gender equality, mental health and working hierarchy. It is great to see the problems shared and we work together for a solution," she said.
She said she was going to propose for an alumni association. "I think we should be in touch after the meeting and offer our experiences to the next delegation," she said.
Antonio I. Basilio, director of the APEC Business Advisory Council, said he was impressed by the performance of youth delegates. "They know what is going on in the world, they love their country and do what they can to help it," he said.
Yao Xuanyu, a Chinese middle school student, said she was going to share her experience with her friends after she returns to China.
"It is very difficult for young people like me who, from an impoverished region, come to such a big platform," she said. "The APEC Voices of the Future broadened our horizon, and encouraged us to fight for a better future."
