Last month Sunball, 21,  had the privilege of being one of the 2000 journalists at the epic G20 London Summit.
Ctrl.Alt.Shift asked her to document her experience...

"What made my attendance a rarity was the fact that I was the second youngest in the press room, and had almost no experience in written media.

This morning I sit here, and I’m revelling in it – though I can’t put my finger on why. I’m pretty certain it wasn’t Barack Obama who made my day, it was my fellow G20 Voice bloggers, ‘’50 exceptional bloggers’’ from all corners of the globe.

Throughout the day there was this crazy- buzz, and I know I was feeding off it - ‘cause I had to get up at 4:00am to get to the ExCeL centre on time – because I was on a high the entire day.

The G20 summit is a meeting of the leaders of the 20 largest economies in the world – representing 85% of the world’s output. Note that’s 85% of the world’s wealth, not the world’s population. So, although Africa has a population of 922 million people and is comprised of 53 countries, there is only one African country (South Africa) in the G20.

The leaders met because we find ourselves in an economic crisis that is affecting the average person through job loss and repossession of homes. Shelter, the housing and homelessness charity estimates that in the UK 37,000 homes will be repossessed in the next six months – that’s shocking and moreover, unacceptable. The situation in the developing world is far deeper. In a developing country, you lose your job and you can no longer send your kid to school and literally, or bring the bread home. Sandra Kabir – the head of BRAC the largest NGO in the world, told me in Bangladesh some women are resorting to begging or even prostitution as a result of job loss. As for the poorest of the poor, many of them have already lost their lives. That’s an indication of the desperation that is faced by the population of the developing world as a result of the global economic downturn that this ‘historic’ summit is endeavoring to alleviate.

I wasn’t naive and hoping this summit would end with leaders announcing a plan to end world poverty (much as I would love for that to happen). As President Obama said in his briefing - he is the president of the United States and it is to them, that he is accountable. Let’s be realistic the developing worlds’ problems weren’t going to be high on the list of the summit’s priorities. The G20 leaders seemed to be incredibly pleased because they reached a ‘’consensus’’.  But I don’t believe that the London Summit as Obama’s put it was ‘historic’. The G20’s main measure is the same as before – lots of money being thrown at an issue that can only be solved by wider and deeper reform.

The current economic crisis has proven market fundamentalism to be false. Worryingly, one of the outcomes of the summit was to increase funding to the IMF (an institution which pushes wholesale liberalisation) by $500 billion. If I’m going to get any sleep at night, then I’d like to know that this increase in funding is accompanied by radical reform of the IMF. Reform has been promised, but economists, academics and development experts have been talking about reform of this notorious institution for decades. Whether the IMF will truly be reformed for the good of developing as well as developed countries remains to be seen.
 
I promised myself, I would remain positive, so I’m not going to start sulking just yet - instead I’m going to be hopeful and patient. One day, G20 will become G72, and include all the African nations."

Words: Sunball Hussain, 21. Sunball works on a youth reporting project for the Department for International Development. She became involved with the project through Platform2, a youth volunteering scheme that made it possible for Sunball to travel to and volunteer in Peru for ten weeks.