Every year, the ceremony for the European Youth Award takes place in Graz, Austria, in order to reward the most innovative and socially valuable projects in the field of human rights and democracy, created by young Europeans. AEGEE is an official partner of this contest, and this year Holger Schmitt (Network Director of AEGEE-Europe) represented the association. Currently, he is part of the online jury.
“The Youth Award wants to demonstrate the potential of young people to create innovative solutions through internet and mobile technology”, Holger explains. The partnership between AEGEE and the European Youth Award was established last Spring by former CD member Kathrin Renner. As a result, AEGEE-Europe sent the open call to present projects to the Youth Award to the whole Network, and it is now one of the juries of the contest.
Holger, Network Director of AEGEE-Europe, will be part of the Jury of the European Youth Award.
According to Holger, who represented AEGEE as part of the Grand Jury, the European Youth Awards aims to promote creative and innovative solutions proposed by young people to improve the society and the environment in general. It’s also a unique way of honoring and motivating young people to be active citizens and create initiatives to improve their environment or provide solutions to everyday problems. “For me it was impressive to see the incredible variety of projects in the fields of nutrition and healthcare, online-learning and open science, arts and games, resource management and sustainability, open government and social cohesion, financial literacy and smart consumption as well as urban development and e-mobility”, Holger says.
Holger became part of the Online Jury when Kathrin told the new Comité Directeur about that possibility: “Since I heard about the EYA award before and I was working in the field of Online Governance I seized the opportunity. Before, I have already been part of the Online Jury for the European Public Sector Award EPSA which has a similar process of online evaluation, so I was already familiar with the process and the structure of the Online Jury”. As an online juror, he was assessing the creativity, innovation and social value of the projects and, as he says, experienced many different concepts and mindsets.
Selecting projects with a strong potential
Before Holger started evaluating the projects, he had a short discussion with the organisers, “where they presented me with the process and the requirements of the Online Jury: as Juror you are presented with a set of criteria for the evaluation of the projects, including the content, design of the platform, innovation, initiative, interactivity, impact and social value”. For each one of these criteria there was a list of indicators to evaluate them from 1-6, and during the four weeks of August he evaluated the cases in two rounds. The first round was aimed to make a preselection of the most innovative and mature projects in order to choose the digital champion in the second round. “I evaluated most cases by myself but luckily I did have the support of my CD team-mates in order to help me to assess several projects”, Holger adds.
When asked about the topics of the project, Holger highlights the variety and the strong messages that the projects presented had: some of them wanted to raise awareness to Third World problems, like a simulation game to develop an African village, trying to survive as a slum boy in the Phillipines in a simulation or promoting solar-run electric water pumps for people in crisis areas. Meanwhile, other projects aimed to increase transparency and exchange with policy makers, for example by asking questions to politicians, who would answer in video statements, or platforms to take part in online consultations of policy processes.
Moreover, other projects aimed to improve personal surroundings, like bringing together jobseekers and jobemployers locally, providing freespace for arts in the dense urban places, organizing seminars and youth projects or promoting free and quality education outside of the formal education system in the community. “I particularly liked projects that combined the digital community with local projects to strengthen cooperation in your home-city and this way provide solutions to everyday problems”, Holger adds.
All in all, the European Youth Award demonstrates that young people are active everywhere in Europe and aim to take initiative for the society and fight the problems we are facing with innovative tools and creative solutions. “For these reasons”, Holger says, “I do believe the European Youth Award is very special”. The best projects will be presented at the EYA Festival in Graz, and you can check the nominees on their official website.
Written by Anna Gumbau, AEGEE-Barcelona