YEN Training on Youth Participation in Belgrade

YEN has started the year of 2016 with the amazing Kick-Off Training “Opening Doors. It took place in Belgrade, Serbia from 16-21th of February. For the first time in history a YEN event was hosted by our member organization “Lunjina” – the Aromanian Youth Council of Serbia.

More than 20 participants from 14 different minorities attended various sessions on youth participation. YEN started the year with this topic, as many European organisations face a lack of youth participation. We as YEN promote young people’s active citizenship in general and aim to support minorities and ethnic groups all over Europe through youth activism. Thus, we want to support young people to bring positive changes to their communities by gaining skills like motivation, teamwork and communication. At his training the sessions consisted of non-formal education, interactive courses, forum theatre exercises, presentations, energizers, as well as a great world café summarizing the results.

At the sessions we had the chance to present the YEN campaign #DiversityConnects and No Hate Speech Movement of the Council of Europe. The participants created videos and other material, that will be used for #DiversityConnects throughout the year.

During an intercultural evening the participants presented their minority culture, their youth organisation and provided culinary specialities. Furthermore the hosts invited us to a great night at the Lunjina Cultural Center where we enjoyed Aromanian (Cincar) music and learned more about their historical heritage and cultural legacy. Of course we also visited historical places, such as the Tesla Museum. We did a boat trip on the Danube river and experienced the nightlife of Belgrade.

As the main topic of this training was “Opening Doors”, the participants were provided with new possibilities to develop strategies and ideas in order to motivate and inspire young people to become active and join youth organizations and fight for minority rights!

Special thanks to our trainers and our orga-team of Lunjina for this wonderful experience. Haristo multu! Hvala!

The event has been supported by the European Youth Foundation.