BEIJING, Jan. 11 -- About 800 teenagers, including 50 physically challenged youth, from across the world will attend the Olympic Youth Camp (OYC) during the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games.

    Disabled youths will take part in such an exercise for the first time in OYC's history.

    The All-China Youth Federation (ACYF), the umbrella organization of all youth groups in China with the Communist Youth League of China as the core, will organize the OYC.

    The ACYF signed the memorandum of agreement for the 2008 Beijing Olympic Youth Camp with the Beijing Organizing Committee for the Games of XXIX Olympiad (BOCOG) yesterday.

    The 21-day camp will give these youths, aged between 16 and 18 years, a first-hand experience of the Olympic ideals of peace, enterprise, teamwork, sportsmanship, fair play and participation as well as the unique Chinese culture.

    They will watch the Games, visit the Olympic Village, stay with local families, travel to famous historical sites and learn Chinese Kongfu and calligraphy, among other things. Some of them will participate in the Olympic torch relay, too.

    Every National Olympic Committee will send a girl and a boy to the camp. The Chinese representatives will be selected later.

    The concept of the youth camp originated at the 1912 Stockholm Olympic Games, when King Gustav V invited 1,500 Boy Scouts to set up tents near the Olympic Stadium. There were no more camps after that till another Scandinavian city, Helsinki, took up the idea in 1952. The experience proved so successful that an OYC has been held during every Olympic Games after that, except in Melbourne (1956) and Los Angeles (1984).

    China Youth Center for International Exchange in Beijing will host these campers.

    (Source: China Daily)