New York, New York!

My name's Gavin Mather, I'm 12 years old and I'm a member of Children's Express in Newcastle - a programme of learning through journalism for young people. I won a place to go to New York with three other Children's Express members to report on the UN Special Session on Children, where plans will be made for improving the lives of millions of children around the world.

Here's my diary of the week.

It took one train journey to London, another to Heathrow, a seven hour flight to JFK and finally a 30 minute bus ride before we actually got into New York City.

The very first impression was that lots of people must live here. The roads are quite packed and the buildings are very, very, very tall so I think by the end of the week I will have a very sore neck!

It may have only been 9pm New York time, but it was 2am in my head so it was pretty much straight to bed by the time we got into the Holiday Inn.

We were up early and after a big American breakfast of pancakes and blueberry jam we jumped into one of the famous yellow cabs and went to the UN building where the special session for children is taking place.

The very first thing that we had to do was to collect our official press passes, which are exactly the same as the ones for adult journalists.

I was surprised to see so many other young journalists from different countries, including Japan, the USA and Kenya. We were at the UN for the opening ceremony of the Children's Forum, where 362 young delegates will discuss what they want to say to government leaders at the Special Session about Children's Rights.

There were loads of people at the opening ceremony including Kofi Annan, General Secretary of the UN and Carol Bellamy, Executive Director of UNICEF.

Unfortunately I thought that the event wasn't very child friendly, and that Kofi Annan and Carol Bellamy were talking more to adults than to children.

However there was some great dancing and singing which I thought had a lot of thought put into it and livened things up a bit. In the afternoon we went on a tour of the UN building.

I learnt about when the building was constructed and the history of the UN, what it does and why it was set up. It was interesting to see all the different rooms which have been donated to the UN by some of the member states.

At the end of the day I felt I was involved in a really important event that could affect children and young people from all over the world and I'm looking forward to seeing how it pans out.

The first stop today was UNICEF house for a breakfast press conference with Carol Bellamy especially for the young journalists at the session.

We fired lots of questions at Carol on topics like war, poverty and health. We also wanted to know how she thought the special session was going to turn out and how young people can be sure that governments will actually do what they say they're going to.

I thought that the press conference was OK apart from the adult journalists who kept pushing past me to get photos.

At lunchtime there was another press conference, this time with three young delegates from Children's Forum.

There were so many journalists who wanted to know what was going on that I had to wait outside whilst two other members of our team stayed in at the press conference. However I did interview some of the youth delegates wandering around outside.

So far it seems that the main topics being discussed are sex education and poverty and some of the delegates are finding it difficult to agree these issues.

Afterwards we went out to a diner for a HUGE lunch. I'm slowly learning that everything in this city is massive.

Tonight was party night! About 300 youth delegates and our fellow young journalists got together for 3 hours of serious dancing at the Manhattan centre.

There was music from all over the world - Spanish music seemed to be the most popular.

The food portions were a bit smaller this time, but I think a good disco was just what we all needed after 2 days of some pretty hard work.

Today was going to be a relaxing day until 12.00, or so I thought. The adults had us working all morning on an article about the opening of the Special Session, so we didn't get any free time.

At lunchtime we went to a second press conference with youth delegates from the Children's Forum. Today's was much less packed than yesterday, and all four of us got in.

My colleague Jasmine and I also interviewed several delegates about progress on key decisions at the Children's Forum. We were told that the issues of family planning had been one of the main reasons for arguments.

We returned to the diner for another huge lunch. David (one of the adults with us) nearly made us late for the closing ceremony of the children's forum because we were busy quizzing each other on where and when the first UN building was built.

The ceremony involved lots of the youth delegates performing traditional dances and songs which got the audience up and clapping along.

However the person who got the biggest cheers was Nelson Mandela and his wife Graca Michel. Many of the youth delegates joined together to present them with the 'Say Yes to Children' campaign which has been signed by more than 93 million people from all over world.

In the evening we actually managed to get some of that free relaxation time that we'd been promised earlier!

It was a good job that we managed to get some time to relax last night as today turned out to be the busiest day so far.

We were up at 6.30 am and after another big breakfast we headed straight to the UN for another press conference and the opening ceremony of the Special Session.

This is where the adults take over and the youth delegates from the Children's Forum get to present them with all the work they've done over the past three days. There was yet more journalism to get on with before lunch.

We grabbed a yellow cab to drive us across town to the BBC offices in New York to report back to Radio 5 Live and local radio listeners about the Children's Forum. As the sun was shining today we decided to have our lunch in the famous central park.

Then it was back to the UN for yet another press conference with the US adult delegates. This conference was about the US governments view on sexual health which has caused a lot of arguments during the children's forum.

After this we had to interview the UK youth delegate Ellen Leaver for a UK newspaper.

After a very hard days work we were all in need of a big meal and some fun. The manager of our hotel had kindly given us vouchers for the New York Hard Rock Café so we could really pig out. We certainly did as the portions here were absolutely humungous!

Today was the best day! We were allowed a break from the work for sight-seeing. So me being me I didn't get out of bed until 9am. The day was great to start off with until I opened the curtains. It was raining!

At about 11:00am we left the hotel to go shopping and sight-seeing. We went up the Empire State building, which was a bit cold at the top, but had a great view. We also went into gadget shops, clothes shops, comic book stores and finally to the big Toys'r'Us on Times square which is so big it has a Ferris wheel inside.

At about 6pm it was back to work. We went to a social event for some of the young people and other young journalists involved in the Children's Forum. Some bits were boring, but some of the young people told really interesting stories.

The one I remembered the most was a 15 year old boy from Sierra Leone who told us about how he'd witnessed his father getting shot when he was just 9 years old.

After the social event we went back to the hotel and straight to bed, because we had to be up very early in the morning to go for breakfast with the Chancellor, Gordon Brown.

Day 7 - Friday May 10 2002

We got up really early this morning just to have breakfast with Gordon Brown at the UN building. We'd heard a rumour that he was going to make a big announcement, but unfortunately that didn't seem to be the case. He saved his news about new help for poor countries until a press conference later on.

Today was the last day of the Special Session on children's rights so we had loads to do to get our articles finished.

We went to more press briefings with Carol Bellamy, young delegates and other important people. Then I thought I would help transcribe some of the interviews we'd done throughout the week.

We didn't leave the UN building until 8pm and then we went straight back to the hotel for dinner.

So I'm back to Newcastle tomorrow. Our flight's not until the evening so we've got a bit more time for some sight-seeing.

All in all it's been a great week. We've worked really hard, but New York is a good city to be busy in.

About the team

This diary was written by Gavin Mather, 12. It was published on BBC Tyne.

For more information about the United Nations General Assembly Special Session on Children, visit Unicef's Special Session website.