3rd Eastern Partnership Youth Forum

Aims & objectives

Eastern Partnership Youth Forum were the third conference dedicated to issues which matter young people, organised in the margins of the Eastern Partnership Summit. The previous Eastern Partnership youth fora took place in Lithuania (2013) and Latvia (2015) focusing on social inclusion and employment/employability respectively.

The main objectives of the 3rd Eastern Partnership Youth Forum are:

To deepen the dialogue and advance cooperation on youth matters and education between the EU and Eastern Partnership countries by sharing expertise and experience as well as providing a space for networking and cooperation in the future, including in local and transnational projects;
To identify and discuss common challenges and propose concrete actions, which would help to address those challenges;
To feed the 5th Eastern Partnership Summit Declaration to be signed in November 2017 in Brussels/Belgium;
To inform the EU youth policy development post 2018, along with national youth policies in the countries involved.

Target group & international/intercultural composition of the group & team

The 3rd Eastern Partnership Youth Forum gathered nearly 300 young leaders, youth workers and youth policy-makers from the EU Member States and Eastern Partner Countries (Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Republic of Moldova and Ukraine)

Training methods used & main activities

During the workshop we used getting to know each other methods, interactive presentation, sharing experiences, group work, mind mapping, etc.

Outcomes of the activity

Outcome of the activity were recommendations to EU, its Member States and Eastern Partnership governments.

YOUNG PEOPLE AND EDUCATION TODAY: FORMAL, NON-FORMAL AND INFORMAL

National governments and the European Union should:

-Establish a structured dialogue involving relevant stakeholders at national level (NGOs, schools, policy-makers, formal and non-formal education stakeholders and experts) active in the fields of education and youth work in order to review the existing national education curricula with regards to the acquisition of transversal competences.
-Develop a concrete strategy to further include transversal competences in existing curricula and ensure that appropriate resources are allocated for the implementation of the strategy.
-Support the creation of synergies in the field of formal and non-formal education between initiatives, youth organisations, civil society organisations, communities, entrepreneurs as well as schools, youth clubs and local youth work structures aiming at effective acquisition of transversal competences.
-Financially support and mainstream holistic education, where formal and non-formal education actors meet and co-operate.

Youth organisations should:

-Seek cross-sectoral recognition that is credible and verifiable for actors from formal education and employment sectors by emphasising adequate documentation and promotion of outcomes and value of youth work and non-formal education activities.
-Co-operate with other education stakeholders in building holistic and inclusive learning experiences with relevant recognition tools.

The final results of the Forum will be presented at the 5th Eastern Partnership Summit which will take place in Brussels/Belgium in November 2017
http://www.eap-youth-forum.pl/files/UserFiles/EaPYF_recommendations.pdf

Your tasks and responsibilities within the team

I together with my colleague Ieva Grundsteine was responsible for Workshop C1: Transversal competences.

The aim of the workshop is:
To explore the development of transversal competencies among youth as response to constantly involving labour market demands
To review existing good practices in the education and youth work field related to competency based learning and development of transversal competencies in EU and EaP countries and beyond.
To discuss challenges related to development of transversal competencies among young people and identify further opportunities for action
To come up with policy recommendations regarding promoting great focus on development of transversal competencies among young people

Our tasks was:
-to develop and implement the workshops during the Forum, in cooperation with experts, leading facilitators and organisers;
-communicate with the participants of the workshops accordingly to the communication strategy which will be agreed during the preparatory meetings;
-participate in a two-day preparatory meeting in Warsaw, Poland on 27-28 March, 2017;
-participate in a one and a half day preparatory meeting in Warsaw, Poland on 20-21 June, 2017;
-provide the detailed outline for the workshops in a written format according to the instructions given by the organisers;
-contribute to the final report of the activity in cooperation with the group rapportuers materials relevant to the implemented workshops;
-contribute to the evaluation of the Forum.

I worked on this training for 2 days as a full time trainer.