On Saturday 22 April YFJ member organisations will vote on who should represent them in the Council of Europe’s Advisory Council on Youth. 13 international youth organisations and 7 national youth councils will be elected – and EFIL hopes to be among them again!
EFIL is glad to support Charlotte Klinting for another mandate in the Advisory Council on youth. Charlotte is an talented young woman, who is a great trainer in intercultural learning and active citizenship, passionate about education, and with great appreciation of diversity and youth participation. She always puts values, commitment, fairness and reliability at the core of what she does.
As Charlotte is representing EFIL, we asked her to tell us more about her current mandate and what she hopes to achieve, if elected for the 2018-2019 mandate of the AC.
How did you get involved in the AC?
EFIL has a Pool of Representatives, which assists in the organisation’s advocacy efforts, e.g. representing us towards the European Youth Forum, or in external events. Through this pool I was active in regional cooperation of the CoE – the Africa-Europe Youth Platform – and of the 4th cycle of the Structured Dialogue, after which I was asked whether I might consider running for the AC. Honestly, I had no idea what I was signing up for, but I’m happy I did it!
Why, is it a lot of work?
Our Chair calculated, that including travel, the average active member of the AC spent the equivalent of 6.4 weeks in 2016 on missions and meetings, both in person and on Skype – so yes, you could say that! But it’s fun too, so we can’t complain!
That’s a lot of time! What do we gain from being part of this process and why spend so much time on it?
EFIL is lucky in that we have a wide geographical reach, which resembles the CoE more than the EU, therefore we benefit more of our members by being part of the Council of Europe’s work. It is also aligned with our values of peace, democracy, NFE, intercultural learning, active citizenship and so on. And the AC itself is a very motivating forum, with lots of inspiring people that we can learn a lot from. Personally, I don’t mind spending a lot of time on it, as long as I can see we are getting somewhere!
So what do you want to focus on in the next mandate, if elected?
In the current mandate, I am responsible for our work with the EU-CoE Youth Partnership, meaning the areas of youth work where CoE and EU cooperate, for example with young refugees or on the topic of learning mobility. I am also in charge of the dossier on Intercultural Dialogue, which is less of a defined topic. In this mandate I have been trying to increase our level of cooperation with the Education department on an area, which involve intercultural dialogue and young people, namely the “Framework Competences for Democratic Culture”. And based on this experience, what I want to bring to the next mandate is increased cross-sector cooperation, where it is relevant for young people to be represented.
What has been a particularly nice experience in this mandate and would like to see happen in the future?
It has been great to see the AC’s profile raised in terms of our external presence, official statements, social media and level of activity in general – but I would like to see an AC where everyone is equally active, and I hope to contribute to creating a motivated AC in the next mandate through a thorough hand-over process. It will just be great to work with and get to know new people from around Europe, and this to me is motivation enough in itself!