Youth for Europe is a project that Momentum World has been a partner in since December 2018. It deals with youth participation in politics, advocacy and European citizenship and is funded by the Erasmus + programme and the EU Commission. Youth for Europe offers young participants (from 6 countries) the chance to play a central role in European decision-making by working together with other young people from across Europe to create policy proposals connected to 3 main areas: Education and Jobs, Media and the Environment.
16 proposals were developed and now they are being presented to, and discussed with, many MEPs across Europe to establish dialogue, cooperation and give the young people a voice. With the current global Covid-19 situation the focus shifted to online meetings replacing the physical summit which was planned to take place in Milan. We are still able to continue to have this dialogue and engage other young people to get involved which brings us to here and now. We have put together a series of live online talks which we have invited many speakers from across Europe to, to speak to the young people directly in their homes. The speakers are discussing their connections to the 3 main topics.
The series of online talks take 2 different formats; MEP proposal groups and live speaker talks – for the MEP talks the participants who took place in one of the 6 youth exchanges (as part of the overall Y4E project) meet online with a MEP and discuss their proposal and how it can be improved and brought forward to the EU. There is also a chance for a Q&A discussion at the end. The live speaker talks are with a whole range of different speakers/experts from across Europe who have an inspiring or informative story to share around one of the 3 main topics of the project and then there is chance to have a discussion and ask questions. These talks are streamed live on the Youth for Europe Facebook page
The live talks will run till the end of June and then hopefully by October Europe will be back to some form of normality and the young people will be able meet the MEPS in person in Brussels for the end of project celebration and evaluation.