Taking It Global has one motto: inspire, inform, involve.

Headquartered in downtown Toronto at 19 Duncan St., the organization is an online community with more than 100,000 youth members, 30 per cent of whom are in Africa.

The site, takingitglobal.com, acts as a hub of information. From a menu on the homepage, a person can be transported to pages discussing anything from Millennium Development Goals to the global digital divide.

There are live discussion boards where students from around the world can discuss topics of interest — social issues including everything from free speech to religion to democracy to global hunger.

In August, the local organization will provide support for the World AIDS 2006 conference in Toronto by designing and running a website that will give the bulk of information to youth coming for the conference. Taking It Global also hopes to give those youth who can't make it to Toronto — because of travel costs — a chance to see what goes on through webcasts, chat boards and moderated sessions that will be translated into three languages.

Alywnne Gwilt