On 5 February, colleagues from Latvia, Lithuania, Finland, and Norway met at the Nordic Council of Ministers’ Office in Riga to launch the project “Nordic–Baltic Youth Initiatives for a Better Future” on youth empowerment. The launch was powerful with a productive seminar and brainstorming sessions.
The youth empowerment project focuses on youngsters. The aim is to gather stories of civic participation of young people – municipality, region or country-level initiatives that youngsters have found interesting, effective or just surprising.
Two on-site workshops are planned on the following dates:
✔ 21.–23.03. in Sigulda, Latvia
✔ 30.05.-02.06. in Oslo, Norway
Participants – youngsters from Latvia, Lithuania, Finland, and Norway – will do practical work gathering and grouping the initiatives, will also discuss, share experiences and learn from each other. In the closing phase they will evaluate and summarise good practice examples and decide on the most effective way of promoting the initiatives.
The intention is to inspire more young people to take active and start change in the society on topics relevant to them, to encourage them and strengthen the belief that they have a voice and can make a significant impact in their municipality and the country as a whole. A series of events, meetings and practical workshops will be organised to strengthen young people’s competences for active participation in civic and democratic processes locally. In the first stage of the project, groups of youth agents will be set up with 9 young people per group representing all partner countries. The first workshop will take place on March 21–23 in Sigulda, Latvia.
The project stems from the reoccurring issue at the last year’s Nordic Youth Summit in Reykjavik, Iceland. It highlighted a problem overlooked for years – young people are asking to be consulted when deciding on youth-related matters. That’s why this project evolves around the opinion of the youth. The idea is to gather the best-practice examples on efficient or effective youth initiatives. Those will be turned into an inspirational material and a kind of guide encouraging youth to take active part in the civic processes. It will be presented at the Nordic-Baltic Youth Conference that will take place in Vilnius, Lithuania, at the end of September.
Participation is free of charge.
Application form: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSe-R05kJz_jOhLY6NC486Ol7vi21e7AgytvVshbQEJiLagFJw/viewform
The project is coordinated by the European Movement in Latvia partnering with the Norwegian Association for Local and Regional Authorities and the Youth Council in Lithuania.
