The EPOR Charlotte Klinting, EFIL’s recently appointed representative for the EU structured dialogue with young people, attended the 2nd edition of the Mediterrenean University for Youth and Development – MEDUNI, in Hammamet, Tunisia. Charlotte participated in the training ‘Structured Participation in Democratic Processes – Strengthening Capacities of Youth organisations’.
The target group of the training were young people from Europe (CoE member States) and Southern and Eastern Mediterranean (Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, Egypt and Jordan), under 30 years old, who are actively involved in a youth, project or initiative organisation (whether local, national, regional or international). The organisations represented were mainly local (from the perspective of Southern and Eastern Med region) and national (Youth Councils of Romania, Italy, Catalonia, Romania, Hungary) organisations, and some branches of international networks such as ADYNE, ATIDE, OXFAM (ITA), AEGEE (TUR). EFIL was the only international organisation/network present. The majority of organisations work on different scales than AFS/EFIL and on projects related to democracy building after the Arab Spring and had also participated – as EFIL- in the Euro-Arab Youth Forum in December 2013. Charlotte was able to make interesting contacts, share the work of EFIL/AFS, and collect knowledge also in view of the VSS 2014 which will focus on Interfaith Dialogue’.
During the programme participants were asked to work on a specific project and strategy for how our organisation tackles ‘structured participation in the democratic process’. Charlotte chose to spend time on one specific mechanism, namely the Structured Dialogue, and how we can improve in this process and be able to include more members in the consultations, and thereby better represent their interests in a meaningful way towards the European institutions, in particular towards the Council of the European Union. A document with an action plan was drafted and hopefully will be implemented, with the help of EFIL members!
For more: Elisa.briga@afs.org
