TOY - Trainers Online for Youth
This is a reference for Ilaria Esposito
The Enter! project on the access to social rights for young people from disadvantaged neighbourhoods was set up in 2009 as a response to the growing concern and attention of the European Steering Group on Youth (CDEJ) and the Advisory Council on Youth (CCJ), the governmental and non-governmental partners of the youth sector of the Council of Europe, to matters of social cohesion and inclusion of young people. The 3- years project, run with the support of the Flemish Agency of Foreign Affairs, drew on the experience of the Council of Europe youth sector in developing non-formal learning and training of youth workers in order to explore ways of responding to challenges faced by young people and youth work institutions.
Enter! aimed at developing youth policy responses to exclusion, discrimination and violence affecting young people in multicultural disadvantaged neighbourhoods. The project was rooted in the overall philosophy of youth work and youth policy of the Council of Europe, which took into account:
a)The role of non-formal learning and youth work in supporting the autonomy of young people.
b)Social inclusion and social cohesion as important dimensions of sustainable democratic societies, citizenship, participation and the agency of young people in matters concerning them
an intercultural learning dimension to diversity based on the understanding of universal human rights.
Several meetings, seminars, activities were set in order to respond to needs of the young people involved: From the Enter! LTTC for youth workers to the Seminar on Youth Policy Approaches and Responses.
Please look at the http://enter.coe.int/ for full detaild activities.
As final event of a three years long term inter-sectoral project of the Youth Sector of the Council of Europe, the Enter! Youth Meeting, was held in Strasbourg in September 2011 gathered 180 young people, youth workers, youth researchers, policy makers and representatives of the project partners with the aim to provide them with the opportunity and the space to voice their opinions, and share their experiences about access to social rights in Europe as a contribution to the development of youth policies in the Council of Europe.
The Enter! Youth Meeting has been organised in co-operation with the Congress of Local and Regional Authorities of the Council of Europe, the Secretariat of the European Social Charter, and Directorate General of Social Cohesion.
During the meeting participants shared their realities on access to social rights and presented ideas on how to address the challenges they face. It was a unique opportunity for young people, coming from local projects background, to meet and contribute to the development of youth policies. They drafted a message to the Council of Europe and worked on recommendations on access to social rights for all young people.
The objectives of the Meeting were:
To share realities and collect experiences of young people affected by the issues of violence, exclusion and discrimination in disadvantaged neighbourhoods
To engage young people into dialogue with the Council of Europe and discuss
together the issue of access to social rights for young people from disadvantaged
neighbourhoods.
To create opportunities for the participants to learn about social rights in Europe by associating the event with the 50th anniversary of the European Social Charter.
To take stock of the experience of young people involved in the projects run within
Enter! long-term training course as a contribution to the planning of the second phase of the Enter! project.
To discuss priority areas of intervention of youth policy on access to social rights for
young people from disadvantaged neighbourhoods.
To provide input to draft policy recommendations for the Committee of Ministers on access to social rights of young people from disadvantaged neighbourhoods.
The Enter! Youth Meeting brought together some 180 young people from the projects developed by the Enter! LTTC participants, local young people from Strasbourg, facilitators/youth workers, resource persons, together with experts, researchers and representatives of the project partners.
Most young people have been recruited from among those who have been involved in the projects of the Enter! LTTC participants.
A limited number of young people have been invited, particularly from countries that are not represented by the Enter! LTTC participants, for example: Andorra, Austria, Belgium, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Cyprus, Czech Republic,
Denmark, Georgia, Hungary, Iceland, Lichtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Moldova, Montenegro, Slovenia, The Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Romania, San Marino, Slovak Republic, Spain, Switzerland, Turkey and Ukraine.
It was requested that participants should have the following profile:
1)Be preferably aged 16 to 201
2)Have been a participant, volunteer or peer educator/leader in a youth project
addressing the issues of violence, exclusion and/or discrimination in disadvantaged neighbourhoods (for the Enter! LTTC participants it should be young people participating in their local projects run within the Enter! LTTC)
3) Have been affected by the issues of violence, exclusion or discrimination in their neighbourhood
4)Preferably speak English or French at a basic level.
The age limit for the participants of the activities organised by the Directorate of Youth and Sport (now Directorate of Democratic Citizenship and Participation) of the Councilof Europe is 30 years. However, due to the nature of this event, priority was given to young people aged
between 16 and 20.
Applications from the countries above-mentioned were submitted using the application form available online at this address: http://youthapplications.coe.int/.
The application should have been made on behalf of the organisation by the youth worker who had to assist and accompany young people coming to the Enter! Youth Meeting. Organisations could propose up to 2 young people and one youth worker to participate in the event.
Preparatory Group members
Pieter Jan Uyttersprot -Consultant trainer, France
Athanasios (Sakis) Krezios -Consultant trainer, Greece
Ilaria Esposito -Advisory Council on Youth,
UK
Thierry Dufour -European Steering Committee for Youth (CDEJ) Belgium
Sara Ulfhielm - European Youth Forum, Belgium
Brigitte Ludman - Consultant trainer, France
Experts
Nadine Lyamouri-Bajja -Consultant Trainer,France
Alexandra Raykova -Consultant trainer, Bulgaria
Matteo Fornaca -Consultant trainer, Italy
Gisele Evrard - Documentalist, Belgium
Filippa Menezes - General rapporteur, Portugal
Countries represented at the event were:
Belgium, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Georgia, Belarus, Russia, Lithuania, Moldova, Montenegro, Romania, Bulgaria, Armenia, Ireland, Albania, Azerbaijan, France, FYROM, Estonia, UK, Finland, Serbia, Sweden, Spain, Portugal, Greece, Italy, Turkey and Ukraine.
The Youth Meeting ensured the continuity of other activities developed in the framework of the Enter! project, as young people invited to the meeting were mainly participants from the youth projects previously developed by the Enter! LTTC participants, that is to say the main
actors addressed by the whole Enter! project.
The meeting built on the previous experiences of the youth sector of the Council of Europe with the European Youth Weeks (up to 200 or 300 participants) of which the last one was held in 1995 and the symposia traditionally held at the European Youth Centres in Strasbourg and Budapest.
The meeting is designed as an intercultural learning situation providing chances for everyone to fully participate and contribute to all programme elements. During the meeting participants will have an opportunity to exchange their experiences and built upon previous results for a common identification of the main priorities to be taken to a policy level.
The programme of the meeting provided space for individual as well as group reflection and debate and encouraged exchange of practices. It specifically had a youth dimension and used inclusive methods and approaches to young people’s input for the policy recommendation, while involving other actors in the process as well.
The main expected outcome of the Youth Meeting was related to the feedback and input participants would have
provided for the development of the policy recommendation to be finalised by the expert group. The involvement of young people in this process was also a key feature of the event.
Moreover, other outcomes envisaged were:
- A message to the Council of Europe on access to social rights of young people from
disadvantaged neighbourhoods
- A video film or message to other Council of Europe institutions
- A report / documentary
- Possibly follow-up projects developed by the participants.
From my side I would focus on the recommendation that young people produced and that after a couple of on-line consultation has been approved by the joint council on youth of CoE and will be presented and voted at the forthcoming Ministerial Conference which will be held in S. Pietrsburg in September 2012.
This is a really good exemple about how such a policy paper can be built up by young people.
In April 2012 there were an evaluation meeting for the Enter! project. While most of the activities included in Enter! were finalised in 2011, the evaluation meeting was particularly relevant to look back at achievements and shortcomings of the project in view planning its consolidation and follow-up in the context of today’s needs and priorities of young people and youth work in relation to access to social rights.
More info, documents and video at http://enter.coe.int/
I was member of the preparatory group on behalf of the Advisory Council on Youth of the Council of Europe.
The PG had two meetings during the previous months and its main role was to prepare, monitor and implement the Enter!
Youth Meeting, including its programme, final choice of the participants, facilitators,
resource persons and experts. The members of the group also took on different responsibilities when it came to dealing with programme issues. The group members were expected to take part in three preparatory meetings, design and deliver some of the session, chairing and facilitation of plenary sessions, coordinate the work with rapporteurs among their working group.
During the event I have been chairing plenary sessions, facilitating the discussion and the drafting of the message for CoE in one of the seven WGs, presenting the game on social rights''Dignityland'' and helping participants to play it. Also the leisure time was planned and I was responsible for the introcuctionay sessions on discovering EYC and the one on Strasbourg rallye using the learning by doing method.