Joshua Stood at UNESCO's Podium in Paris Today. He Brought 10 Youth Grant Recipients With Him.
On Thursday morning in Paris, Seventeen's Joshua delivered a speech at UNESCO headquarters as the group's Youth Goodwill Ambassador - the culmination of a two-year institutional partnership that began with a $1 million donation and has now reached its first public scale-up moment. The event, titled "UNESCO x Seventeen: Celebrating Youth, Creativity and Well-Being Together," marked the expansion of the Global Youth Grant Scheme that Seventeen funded at their 2024 ambassadorial appointment. UNESCO Director-General Khaled El-Enany attended. Ten youth grant recipients, selected from 100 teams that participated in the Going Together program, were present in the room.
Joshua spoke in English on behalf of all 13 Seventeen members. His remarks covered the group's journey since the 2024 appointment, the impact of the grant scheme on young people's projects across Southeast Asia, Latin America, and sub-Saharan Africa, and what he called the connection between creativity and youth wellbeing. "We believe in the power of young people to change the world through creativity and collaboration," he said, according to excerpts released by Pledis Entertainment. The full speech was livestreamed on UNESCO's official YouTube channel.
Among the grant recipients present at Thursday's ceremony was Mary Rose Pagador from Barangay Particion in the Philippines, who built a community library from scratch within a year - 600 books, 350 beneficiaries - using grant funding. Others represented climate action projects, digital inclusion initiatives, and mental health programs across multiple regions. The Going Together program's scale-up phase, which Thursday's ceremony formalized, was partially enabled by additional fundraising from a Seventeen-organized charity auction held around International Youth Day in 2025.
Joshua was born Hong Jisoo in Los Angeles, making him one of the group's Korean-American members. He has delivered UNESCO remarks before, most recently at the 13th UNESCO Youth Forum in November 2023, where Seventeen became the first K-pop act to host a special session at that forum. His selection as the sole representative for Thursday's ceremony - ahead of the group's next major activity, the V8 unit debut on June 29 - reflects both his English fluency and his previous experience at the podium.
The Paris speech arrives in the same week that BTS's RM was named the National Museum of Korea's first global ambassador and Arirang topped Oricon's Japan first-half rankings. Two groups, multiple members, simultaneously visible in institutional and cultural contexts that extend well beyond music. The overlap is not coordinated. It is also not coincidental - it reflects what a decade of deliberate platform-building looks like when it runs at full speed.
