EBY: Empowering Balkan Youth

The European Union shares with the Western Balkans ambitious objectives for smart, inclusive and sustainable growth with a view to delivering high levels of employment, productivity and social cohesion. Investing in human and social capital is an essential condition to achieve those growth targets. Such investments can yield even better returns when they are focused on the young generation, which has to be equipped with the skills it needs to succeed in an increasingly complex and fast-changing social and economic reality and which has to get the opportunity to share a feeling of appropriation and belonging to a common project to which it can contribute.
In this context, Europe and the Western Balkans need to extend and broaden learning opportunities for young people as a whole, including supporting the acquisition of skills through non-formal educational activities. Today the effectiveness of traditional education is challenged and learning pathways are no longer for everyone alike. Learning can take place everywhere, in schools, but also in associations, on social media or in social life. Many young people are actively engaged and take leadership roles in youth organisations. This helps them acquire transversal skills which allow them to be fit to adapt to the rapidly evolving change in the demands for jobs and skills, even for jobs and skills that do not yet exist.
Moreover, the European Union aims at encouraging people-to-people contacts, in particular among the young generation, as an important dimension of its relations with third countries. People-to-people contacts are important to promote mutual understanding as well as social, cultural and economic development. They are particularly important when promoted at an early stage so as to instil a culture of dialogue and understanding in the young generations. This has been reaffirmed in various documents and contexts with reference to relations with different partner regions and countries.
The Erasmus+ programme is one of the key instruments of the European Union for achieving its objectives in terms of young people's personal, socio-educational and professional development. The Erasmus+ programme has a youth dimension which offers opportunities for young people and youth workers in the area of non-formal learning. Such a youth dimension is also open to young people, youth workers and youth organisations from the Western Balkans, although with resources that are not able to cope with the growing demand of actors from the region.
The main challenge of the education and training systems in the Western Balkans and in the Union nowadays is to equip citizens, and in particular young people, with the competences that will prepare them for a demanding and rapidly changing labour market. In this challenging social and economic context, young people are confronted with rising levels of knowledge and multiple skills requirements, a need that cannot be satisfied by the formal education sector alone. Furthermore, living in diverse and ageing societies requires more intercultural, inter-community and intergenerational dialogue as well as the development of a culture of solidarity, care and understanding among citizens, especially the youngest generations. Yet, the benefits of intercultural dialogue are challenged by one fourth of the youth population in the EU, as they consider that culture is not enriched by foreigners or immigrants.
Another challenge relates to the development of social capital among youth, the empowerment of young people and their ability to participate actively in society. Young people are much less likely to vote than adults, their voices are much less heard in political debates. Insufficient opportunities for participation,
limited awareness of the importance to participate, mistrust in the institutions, low interest in politics, insufficient youth-targeted information, inadequate tools to reach out to young people are among the causes of such disaffection and the significant decline in participation in society and democratic life. On the other hand, new forms of involvement are emerging through the new media and social networks, which young people have embraced in large numbers.
After almost two years of Erasmus+ and the Agreement establishing Serbia Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Montenegro partial participation in 'Erasmus+': the Union programme for education, training, youth and sport (2014-2020), partners believe that there is the needs to share feedback but also to find out more about the opportunities that the Programme offers. In the overall sociopolitical context of the Western Balkan region and European integration perspectives, we also want to look at the actual relevance of the Programme for the Western Balkan region as well as potential synergies with other regional initiatives in the field of youth.
18 months
3 international meeting
3-4 Multiplier Events
1 Training Course