TOY - Trainers Online for Youth
This is a reference for Ilaria Esposito
As part of the long term project “Act -Democracy” - Youth participation and active citizenship for peace, democracy and social promotion, promoted by FNG, the meeting has been organised in collaboration with the Italian National Agency and with the support of the European Commission – Youth in Action Programme. Other relevant National Youth Councils and INGO took part in the
meeting.
The meeting aimed to open the floor for a joint reflection on the inputs and the proposals related to capacity building, volunteering, youth rights and youth employment, the main topics tackled in the Euro-Arab and Mediterranean Youth Leaders Meeting held in Rome in May 2012, and decline them in an holistic and sustainable approach.
The main objectives were:
· to strengthen NYCs and youth organizations through the development of a long term common strategy sharing objectives and resources in the process of
cooperation, co-management and representativeness towards international
institutions and institutional bodies;
· to promote the participation and the contribution of young people in the decision making processes at local, national and international level in regards to youth policies through NYCs;
· to recognize and promote the role of non formal education as the methodology able to support the development of youth organizations in terms of active participation and key competences development, to create innovative and
sustainable proposals, implement specific policies for active citizenship and social inclusion, enhance young people competences through activities of capacity building and leadership empowerment;
· set up common priorities in the advocacy process at the European level;
· to promote cooperation through intercultural dialogue.
The SYC was represented by its usual composition: CJE (Spain), CNAJEP (France), CNJ (Portugal), CNJC (Catalonia),
ESYN (Greece), FNG (Italy), KNZ (Malta), MMH (Croatia), MSS (Slovenia), CJCF
(Belgium), CYC (Cyprus). With the development of youth work in the geographical area, other councils recently started to cooperate with SYC: NYF (Bulgaria), CTR (Romania) and KOMS (Serbia).
The main fields of cooperation among the Southern National Youth Councils - SYC
are: advocacy, capacity building, youth work development, international and
global cooperation.
The representatives were youth political leaders and NYCs officers.
The meeting has been structured through a non-formal education approach, the
methodology recognised by the European Commission and the Council of Europe as
complementary to formal education/learning to develop key competences such as interpersonal and intercultural, social and expression of creativity.
A set of methods has been used to build up the group and facilitate the teamwork,
but also to create a safe atmosphere to share opinions, concerns and cultural point
of views in order to create creative and innovative joint proposals for future actions.
e.g. focus group, thematic workshops, getting to know each other's NYC (exhibition cafe`)
1. Established a lasting coordination through different communication channels among NYCs and youth organizations at national and regional level.
2. A local networks was created, able to engage young people in participatory processes for the implementation of youth policies and regional cooperation processes;
3. co-designed strategies and actions with the aim to meet and work through the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals – MDGs and the social
and economical development of the area;
4. Updated the strategy at national and European level and the perspective concerning the vision and the proposals resulting from the Euro-Arab Mediterranean youth cooperation process;
5. A joint strategy was created in order to guarantee the Southern Youth Council representativeness within the national and European institutions.
Coordinating the trainer team in terms of methods adjustments and roles division during the residential meeting.
I was specifically following the working group on Youth Rights.
However my general role was to make sure that a space for innovative and sustainable proposals would habe been created and the facilitation for setting up common priorities in the advocacy process at the European level would have been successful.