40 representatives of youth formal and informal organisations met in Palermo during the International Youth-net Forum hosted by CESIE. The Forum was the conclusive step of the first stage of the project REBUILDing Society Through Youth Engagement, aimed at fostering networking opportunities among youth organisations active in initiatives of social solidarity and/or green lifestyles, to promote a true European dialogue on youth contribution to social development as we all recover from the COVID19 pandemic.
Youth representatives came from Italy, Cyprus, Greece, Lithuania, and Spain and for 2 days they had the chance to discover how their peers in different EU countries are overcoming the barriers to youth development created or exacerbated by the pandemic.
It was an absolute honour for CESIE and for the project partners to meet them, listen to their inspiring work at local level, and see how networking mobilities truly bear a tangible potential to close important gaps in terms of long-term opportunities for our youth. These young professionals are very unique in their backgrounds and aims, but all share the common objective to play their part in changing their societies for the better one little step at a time, day after day. The difficulties they must overcome are not few, issues they were able to share during the Forum, but following on their characteristic resilience they also and foremost discussed on possible alternative ways to overcome those issues and keep fighting!
Their role in REBUILD will be extremely precious, as they will act as mentors for under-represented young people who will be trained in project design and capacity building between July and September. From October and until the end of the year, they will also support the trained young people as they implement their project ideas, which they will conceive also with the help of their mentors and of project partners.
REBUILD is all about giving more space to our youth to define their own needs and to identify the solutions to their issues. They have shown to possess the skills and the resilience which are necessary to find alternative solutions to sensible universal problems, and they certainly have not stopped hoping for a better, greener and more equal world.
It is this resilience and creativity that we will celebrate throughout the project, so check our website to discover the youth initiatives and to follow the young people as they implement their project ideas next fall: http://rebuild-europe.net/
You will also have the chance to vote your favourite project idea, contributing to a life-changing experience as the winners will travel to Brussels to meet youth stakeholders at the end of the project in April 2023.
Do you wish to learn more about the youth trainings, or are you a young person who would like to participate in the trainings and implementation of your project idea with us?
Contact Eileen Quinn: eileen.quinn@cesie.org and follow us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.
About the project
REBUILD is an Erasmus+ project financed by EACEA (Key Action 3 – European Youth Together), and is aimed at rebuilding youth civic participation after the COVID19 pandemic
Partners
Its partners are:
- CESIE (Italy, coordinator),
- D’Antilles et D’Ailleurs (Martinique),
- KMOP (Greece),
- Iniciativa Internacional Joven – AIIJ (Spain);
- Active Youth Association (Lithuania);
- CARDET (Cyprus);
- Out of the Box International (Belgium).
For further information
Contact Alice Valenza: alice.valenza@cesie.org