TOY - Trainers Online for Youth
This is a reference for Teodora Panuş
The forum examined the state of youth rights and the conditions facing youth NGOs across the Eastern Partnership region. Youth leaders, European diplomats, and civil society representatives analysed regional trends in democratic participation, shared practice, and built strategies to strengthen youth protection across Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Moldova, and Ukraine. A secondary aim was to rebuild active collaboration within the EaP NYC network after a decade-long pause, and to connect EaP youth organisations with European institutions, including the Council of Europe and the European Youth Forum.
Participants came from the six Eastern Partnership countries — Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Moldova, and Ukraine — alongside speakers and facilitators from Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Lithuania, and Sweden. Represented institutions included the Council of Europe, the European Youth Forum, the International Republican Institute, the Danish Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the German Federal Youth Council (DNK), Uppsala University, and the United Transitional Cabinet of Belarus.
The forum relied on participatory and non-formal facilitation methods: moderated panel discussions with structured Q&A, open-floor debate with audience-generated questions, facilitated reflection between sessions, and peer exchange among youth leaders from different national and political contexts. The format was discussion-led throughout, with participants drawing on lived experience rather than receiving presentations.
Participants mapped shared challenges across the EaP on youth rights, civil society funding, state-youth cooperation, and EU integration — and identified concrete strategies in response. The forum relaunched structured collaboration within the EaP NYC network and introduced a new cohort of moderators through a live mentoring process, building the network's facilitation capacity going forward.
Teodora co-organised the forum and served as lead moderator for the opening and closing plenaries. She delivered the welcome introduction, contextualising the EaP NYC network's history and setting the agenda for the day. Between sessions, she managed speaker transitions and kept discussions on track. Running in parallel, she mentored the incoming generation of network moderators in real time — a deliberate leadership handover built into the event's design.