YouthUp! (Alternative forms for political participation) CYC Summer School

Aims & objectives

The main aims of the CYC Summer School were:
(a) to introduce the process of the Structured Dialogue (SD) to Cypriot youth from all the communities and ethnoreligious minorities living in the island (Greek-Cypriots, Turkish-Cypriots, Armenians, Maronites, Latins), and
(b) to explore the results of the trio Presidencies of the Council of the EU (Italy, Latvia, Luxembourg) on alternative forms of political participation (sports, art, etc), in order
(c) to empower young people to use all the available tools, and create new ones, for seeking their rights, and to draft policy recommendations for increasing youth political participation.

This was an Erasmus+:Youth KA3 project.

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

The participants were young people from all the communities and ethnoreligious minorities living in the island (Greek-Cypriots, Turkish-Cypriots, Armenians, Maronites, Latins), as well as young people of EU (Greece, Romania), and non-EU (Russia) national backgrounds, living in Cyprus.

The team of trainers was composed by Cypriot, Greek, and French trainers, from both the CYC and the European Youth Forum (YFJ) Pools of Trainers.

Training methods used & main activities

1) Workshop on recognised/ formal forms of political participation (including: brainstorming, work in small groups, presentations by the participants, discussion of results in the plenary).
2) Workshop on exploring alternative forms of political participation (including: brainstorming, work in small groups, presentations by the participants, discussion of results in the plenary).
3) YFJ YouthUp! workshop on alternative forms of youth political participation (http://www.youthup.eu).
4) World café (for discussing the current SD questions).

Outcomes of the activity

The main outcomes were:
(a) A successful introduction of the SD to young people living in Cyprus;
(b) a fruitful drafting of policy recommendations, which will be finalised and approved by the next CYC General Assembly.

For further info, please, visit:
http://cyc.org.cy
https://www.facebook.com/cyprusyouth/
http://www.youthup.eu/

Your tasks and responsibilities within the team

1) To design, implement, and evaluate, together with all the team of trainers, the programme of activities.
2) As the main working language was Greek (due to a number of non-English speaking Greek-Cypriot young people), to facilitate the inclusion of and the communication with English speakers (mainly Turkish-Cypriot young people).

I worked on this training for 3 days as a full time trainer.