Seminar Engaging Youth and the World

The Development Education seminar ‘Engaging with Youth and the World’ took place on the 29th and 30th April in the Emmaus Centre, in Swords.

The event looked at the new European Youth Strategy, from the perspectives of the actual policy and the practical implementation of it.

With regard to the policy, you might find it useful to take a look at the European Youth Strategy which you can find at: http://ec.europa.eu/youth/youth-policies/doc1716_en.htm

During the seminar, regarding to the European Youth Strategy, we focussed our work in the 1 of the 8 aspects or ‘fields of action’ of the European Youth Strategy called ‘Youth and the World’. To know more about this, you can visit: http://ec.europa.eu/youth/youth-policies/doc1701_en.htm

The different Roundtables we did about this topic were:

Ø Roundtable 1: How is the European Youth Strategy relevant to my youth work?

Ø Roundtable 2: Exploring ‘Youth and the World’ field of action and its implication for youth work

Ø Roundtable 3: Identify concrete recommendations for implementing the ‘Youth and the World’ field of action and indicators for measuring impact

The Seminar also addressed how the Youth in Action funding programme can be used to support development education activity.

Information on the Youth in Action funding programme is available from Leargas: http://www.leargas.ie/programme_main.php?prog_code=7777&Submit=GO who manage a number of the Youth in Action programmes in Ireland.

An Executive Agency of Youth in Action manages some of the Youth in Action programmes centrally from Brussels, including Action 3.2 ‘Youth in the World’. For your information, a call for applications is currently open under Action 3.2 with a deadline of 17th May. More information on this Call is available at: http://eacea.ec.europa.eu/youth/funding/2010/call_action_3_2_en.php

This presentation on ‘Youth in the World’ was delivered by a member of the Executive Agency for Youth in Action.

Finally, we worked also in different Panel Discussion and speakers at the event.

Irish Aid http://www.irishaid.gov.ie/ and in particular, the Irish Aid Development Education Strategy for 2007 – 2011 at: http://www.irishaid.gov.ie/Uploads/Dev_Ed_final.pdf

Office of the Minister for Children and Youth Affairs (and in particular the Youth Affairs unit) http://www.omc.gov.ie/viewdoc.asp?fn=%2Fdocuments%2Fyouthaffairs%2FYAwhatsnew.htm&mn=youd&nID=1

European Parliament http://www.europarl.europa.eu/news/public/default_en.htm including it’s Committee on Culture and Education http://www.europarl.europa.eu/activities/committees/homeCom.do?language=EN&body=CULT

Other useful links provided during the seminare are:

· Dochas http://www.dochas.ie/

 IDEA (Irish Development Education Association) http://www.ideaonline.ie/

· European Youth Forum http://www.youthforum.org/en

Definetelly, we had a very enjoyable and informative seminar.