the 1st conference took place from 25.03 to 28.03.2019 in Bucharest, hosted by the Romanian Presidency.
The 6th cycle of the structured dialogue finished last year with the outcome of the youth goals! Over 130 000 young people participated to contribute to the new EU Youth Strategy 2019-2027 (https://ec.europa.eu/youth/news/eu-youth-strategy-adopted_de). Based on this outcome, the next cycle of the (now called) youth cycle kicked-off in Bucharest! EFIL participated again, bringing in the perspective of an International Non-Governmental Youth Organisation and representing our over 40 000 volunteers.
On the first day, the participants shared various inputs regarding the topic of the conference, “Future of Youth Work”, focusing on the question of what quality employment could be and of which skills young people need to engage in work as well as in society in the future. One take-away from the discussion is the way we phrase soft and hard skills, with the suggestion to talk of essential skills rather than soft skills.
Build on this, several inputs were given with the aim to highlight the importance of Pluralist democracies in order to achieve a peaceful and inclusive society and to enhance young people’s access to rights. One way to achieve this is of course youth work and non-formal education, which means that young people should be involved in everything that affects them – which is basically everything.
Afterwards, the participants split up in order to focus on the youth goals in separate groups, and tried to link them to the overall topic of the Youth conference. Eventually, everybody highlighted the importance of the goals and is now looking forward to future actions through this cycle and to consult every young person in Europe about the future we all desire to live in.
