The 10th Africa-Europe Training Course for Youth Organisations took place in Nairobi, Kenya, between 25 January and 1February within the framework of the 6th African University on Youth and Development. 25 participants had been selected out of hundreds of candidates from national and international youth organisations from the two continents. EFIL was represented by Vica Bedő.
What was it all about?
North-South Center of the Council of Europe: „European Center for Global Interdependence and Solidarity”. Programmes: Youth co-operation, Women empowerment, Other Activities (Global Education, Lisbon Forum, North-South Prize). Find out more on the webpage here.
Africa-Europe Youth Co-operation
Aims:
• Promote the empowerment of Europe’s and Africa’s youth
• Strengthen young people’s capacity to share information and to get involved in the implementation, monitoring and evaluation of the Joint Strategy
• Facilitate encounters and exchange between young Africans and Europeans
• Help mapping the existing African youth networks
Realities of Youth Work in Africa and in Europe
The training gathered the same number of young people from Africa and from Europe, and the organisers also kept the gender balance in mind while selecting the participants. This combination gave us the chance to widely discover each others’ realities through different activities, such as reality poster-making, media analysis, simulation on stereotypes, bazaar of organisations, etc.
Needs and challenges of youth
Even the more internationally active organisations’ representatives from both continents had doubts about finding many common points in the needs and challenges of young people and youth workers in the two continents, because of the very different realities, social and economical differences and so much more.
Instead, the 7 days of work together showed us that the issues we’re dealing with, are overlapping each other: youth unemployment, youth involvement in decision-making, need for intercultural learning, Human Rights issues, youth mobility, etc.
Advocacy
We learned about the purpose, efficient ways and tricks of advocacy. The „Advocacy capacity building” project of the EFIL & EEE-YFU co-operation was also launched at the same time as the Africa-Europe Training was going on, so the collected knowledge will appear in the content of this program.
Co-operation and fundraising possibilities
Several funding and co-operation possibilities were introduced during the training, such as: Seed Fundings,CoE, Erasmus+, Programmes of the African Union, East-African Community. South-African Development Community, Economic Community of West-African States. A great resource about fundraising in Europe:„Money grows on trees” publication by the European Youth Forum.
Global Education
The basics of Global Education were also discussed within the group. For more information feel free to contact me (Vica Bedő, bedo.viktoria@gmail.com), because I have attended the online course of the Council of Europe on the topic as well.
Falling in love with Africa
You can get to know a bit about this beautiful country through this video, made with the help of the Seed Fundings. I had the chance to stay 10 more days in the country, what turned out to be one of the most interesting trips of my life. I suggest that if you have the chance, visit Kenya and meet our AFSer friends there!
For more information about the event: bedo.viktoria@gmail.com