It is very powerful to be on the street squished among thousands of farmers chanting “Junk WTO” while I’m walking to the convention center with the WTO ID badge in my purse.

It is Saturday, and the facilitators had a 6 am deadline to give the text from their committees to the chairman, which means they worked all night. This is an around the clock event. There are lots of NGOs are wearing stickers that say “No Annex C.” Annex C is the implementation timeline of the General Agreement of Terms and Services (GATS), which currently has unfavorable implications for developing countries.

I am thinking about the difference between me and the people in the streets without the WTO accreditation. My privilege to be able walk into the WTO meeting – my privilege as an American – my privilege as a relatively rich person. But it is not that simple, there are farmers from West Africa here just like me, and NGOs have brought in people from all over the world, a girl from Zambia, women’s groups from the Philippines. It is much less of a secret to get into this meeting than anyone would expect: register with and NGO and get yourself to Asia. But so I am here, now what?

Often, the larger the meeting, the harder it is to derive an outcome. There are too many country negotiators, adding in NGOs won’t solve the problems of inequity, but it does increase the transparency of the meeting, making sure the world is truly watching.

The draft text has just been handed to me – so I am off to read -- more on all this later.

I arrived yesterday, and what a conference. Deluxe. The convention center is the only building I have ever seen that looks like a clam shell.

We had a panel last night on youth and fair trade, which went quite well. About 50 young people were there from around the world, and the energy, intelligence and care for the issues was moving. There is a spectrum of youth belief on trade - from the "inside approach" of a young Canadian working with business students at his universities, the "direct approach" of international partnership between students in the Phillipines and Hong Kong talking about trade relations between the two countries, and other students working on human rights advocacy in their own countries.

After the presentations, the expected "what can I do exchange" ensued. Addressing a question from a girl in the US, a young man from Nepal said "Make your trade minister responsible. While we sit here talking in this room about working together your trade minister is telling mine if you don't sign this we will cut your aid."

What a lot of work we have to do, to mobilize the people of our countries so that the trade minister knows we are watching their every move. If Nepal is to stand up to the US, for example, they need someone in the world to have their back. Ideally, the people of the US would say, let Nepal have their sovereign decision, but don't cut our life-saving aid to them. Aid is no gift in international politics, there is always a cost.

So the issues here are every complex -- you can sit in a briefing and quickly get lost with all the paragraph referenced, jargon and acronyms. But there is a lot to take in, and a young person can learn a lot here, as much as anyone. Ironically, the WTO is a great place to meet other NGOs and agencies, and learn about exciting new technologies. People here are smart, approachable and the facilities are good. Like any conferences, people meet, ideas are born, and projects grow. But I am impressed by the caliber of the people here, and the projects presented that address the urgency of peoples needs.

For example, I learned about all the new technologies that are being developed for bio-diesel, and regardless of trade talks, as we speak companies are making cheap, efficient, eco-friendly fuels out of palm, cooking oil, and other waste. Its only a matter of time before they hit our markets.

In another case, I met a woman from Laos who has a cooperative making organic cotton baby clothes. I think that young mothers shopping at the thousands of organic grocery stores in the US would love to buy these baby clothes. All we need to do to make it happen is to build a relationship.