The "Let's" long-term activity

For the first time in the EU youth programmes history, the Youth in Action Programme that started in 2007 included very deliberated action, focused on cooperation with young people and youth organisations from outside of European Union. The action is named "Youth in the world" and numbered with 3.

As the regional SALTOs focus on cooperation with the neighbouring regions of EU, namely Meda, South East Europe and Eastern Europe & Caucasus, their support for development of new action 3 was very natural. Moreover, action 2 - "European Voluntary Service", that is also hugely supporting cooperation with the neighbouring countries, remain in the strong focus of regional SALTOs activities.

Taking into consideration the potential of actions 2 and 3 influence on the youth cooperation with neighbouring regions, in 2007 the regional SALTOs Euromed, SEE and EECA together with European Commission and the French National Agency organised a seminar "Let's MEET our Neighbours and the World". At that time we wanted to give a big kick-off seminar that would open possibilities for cooperation with the Neighbouring Countries and the World within the Youth in Action Programme, action 3.

The following year, in 2008, our cooperation developed and together with the National Agencies of France, Poland and Slovenia we organised a second stage of "Let's..." events - "Let's WORK with our Neighbours". The aim of this multidimensional seminar was to develop further high quality projects within the priorities of the Youth in Action Programme.

And then in 2009 the time to EVALUATE the cooperation between partners from the three neighbouring regions of EECA, SEE and Euromed as well as Programme Countries has come. A third seminar called "Let's EVALUATE with our Neighbours" took place.

You may read about the experiences of "Let's" long-term strategy in this BOOKLET

Even though we had gone through a full cycle - from partner matching to evaluating cooperation, we decided to continue such a successful collaboration and to include new partners, and at the same time to change the format of the activities.

In 2010, each Regional SALTO in cooperation with a thematic SALTO and the National Agencies network will develop a specific topic relevant for the Region. This will be unique 3 parallel trainings called "Let's TRAIN with our Neighbours", involving participants from all Neighbouring Regions:

• SALTOs EuroMed and Participation will focus on Civil Society, Participation and Democracy
• - SALTOs South East Europe and Training & Cooperation will focus on Recognition of non-formal learning
• - and finally SALTOs Eastern Europe and Caucasus with SALTO Cultural Diversity will focus on Peace Education

After each separate training, there will be a few months phase of coaching participants to help them to create and run their own projects in their fields of interest. Finally this process will bring all participants and institutional partners to the evaluation seminar in the end of 2011 during the Polish Presidency of European Union.

So stay tuned and follow the "Let's" developments...