April 1 has brought us a new project and it is not a joke!

The project “Active Youth-Step Towards Joint Changes” officially started with the implementation on April 1, 2018, and it will be implemented by Development Center for Youth in cooperation with the following partners: associations YouthWatch from Slovakia, Intermedia from Serbia, COSMO from Montenegro and Institute for Youth Development KULT from Bosnia and Herzegovina, with the support of the European Youth Foundation of the Council of Europe.

During this 9-month project, which should bring together experienced youth activists and leaders from Serbia, Montenegro, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Macedonia, Croatia, Albania, Greece, Czech Republic and Slovakia, selected participants will be able to deal more closely with the issue of youth participation in public and political life of the community, trying to come to the answer why most of the current initiatives launched in order for young people to become more active part of the community have not yielded the expected results and what can really be done to change that fact.

If we want real changes, we need to start with the change of awareness of youth, as the potentially most creative and most energetic part of society.

Online activism, introduction of more detailed knowledge on human and civil rights in the official school system through civic education, positive discrimination measures, advocacy for the introduction of obligatory voting are just some of the topics to be addressed by selected participants.

Project, which will include the initial four-day training in June, a set of local activities in the period from July to October and a new gathering of participants in November (to exchange experiences from the local level), should result in a common set of recommendations for different target groups (actors of importance – from local administration and the media, to young people themselves), through offering answers to the same question – how each of these target groups can contribute to the real encouragement and improvement of youth activism.

First meeting of the project team will be held on April 13 in Sarajevo, while the public call for participants will be announced on May 1 and open until May 20, 2018. More information about the project will follow soon.