The last week-end of January, the Spanish National Youth Council organised a youth meeting « Young people are looking for European program to participate », directly tackling the priorities established by the Danish presidency of the European Union under the frame of the structured dialogue process. The thematic which has been given priority in the youth field by the Danish government is youth participation, and especially *youth participation in elections*, *creativity and innovation as a source to strengthen participation* and *European program for youth participation* (the future of the YiA program)
AEGEE was represented in this meeting by members from AEGEE-Las Palmas (Luis Alvarado Martinez, Lucille Rieux), AEGEE-Tenerife (David Perdomo and Tayri Campo), AEGEE-Santander (Mari Cruz Payan), AEGEE Léon (Jorge Miguel), AEGEE-Alicante (Miguel Gallardo) and from AEGEE-Oviedo (Rebecca de Soignie, former member of AEGEE Oviedo and honorary member of the same antenna, who was also facilitating the meeting).
Yet, getting there wasn’t easy as you might think ! Indeed, AEGEE members were allowed to take part in this meeting only because for the last month, the Netcom team has been working hard for AEGEE to become member of the Spanish National Youth Council. Being such a member enables AEGEE members from any Spanish antenna to join the trainings, forum and other youth meetings organised by the youth council. Topics are wide, and deal with youth policies in general, from education to health, and from unemployment to culture. AEGEE members can attend those events, and bring their experience and knowledge of Europe to enrich the debate.
This was a two-days event based on the structured dialogue method, and which directly answered the issues pointed out by the Danish presidency of the EU. Participants were from a wide range of youth association, from political oriented, to student association, feminist, minorities and…European (ours). Its main objective was to gather participants’ opinions and propositions regarding the questions which have been raised by the Danish presidency, and that were included in the online questionnaire you might have already answered http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/YGDN53W
The objective was therefore clear : reach a conclusion for each of the 7 questions dealing with the 3 priorities defined above. For each question, participants discussed and proposed concrete initiatives that could, according to them, improve the situation of youth participation.
What will the Spanish Youth Council do with this conclusion? Well, they will bring them and defend them at the Danish Youth Meeting which will take place in March in Copenhagen (http://eu2012.dk/en/)
For AEGEE members, this meeting was very interesting for several reasons. First of all, the possibility to discuss and interact
with other young people interested in youth topics, but who have a completely different background as the one that we, AEGEE people usually have, turned out to be a very enriching experience. Indeed, during this meeting, where AEGEE was the most represented NGO, we were sitting around the table with young people from rural youth group, feminist group, LGTB associations, and even political youth associations, which is something we rarely do in AEGEE : getting out of our bubble. Secondly, the process itself was new for most of us. Very rarely do we attend a conference or a meeting where we know that the objective is to collect concrete results and proposals which will be shown afterwards. This pushes you towards an active position, and is very stimulating. Finally, it gave some of us the idea to start this kind of structured dialogue initiatives within AEGEE, if we take into consideration that one of the aims of our current strategic plan is to « actively involve AEGEE-Europe in the structured dialogue initiative of the European commission, with the support of experienced AEGEE members, contributing to each round of relevant consultation ». In AEGEE, we often tend to stay too much into internal talks, but in the end, we can, and we should make our voices heard outside!
Once more, we want to thank the Netcom team for a great job lobbying to enter the Youth Council and therefore enabling AEGEE members to attend such meetings.
Written by Lucille Rieux, AEGEE-Toulouse & AEGEE-Las Palmas