YIUE Detailed Description:
All too often, urban environments - with impersonal streetscapes, lack of community interaction on the street and inequitable mobility systems - tend to alienate and isolate young people from one another and from local institutions. There is a need for more youth participation in decisions that affect the local physical and social environment that we live in each day. In fact, traffic accidents remain the leading cause of death among people ages 5 to 29, according to the World Health Organisation.
Policy-makers and organisations at all levels in Europe have recognised the urgency of rethinking our urban environments to be more inclusive of young people. Civil disturbances in European cities have highlighted need for urban development strategies that reduce social exclusion and actively involve young people of all social and cultural groups in decision-making. We follow the strategies for intercultural cooperation and youth participation in the "All Different - All Equal" campaign and our project is affiliated with the campaign. Our workshop brings together young people from very diverse European cultures and provides natural opportunities for cooperation between groups who are often at odds in the urban setting.
The theme of our leadership workshop in 2007 will be facilitating youth participation and leadership in local decision-making and adapting the urban environment to promote social inclusion of young people across cultural boundaries. When young people have a voice in designing the urban environment, we will naturally retain a stake in it and work to improve it.
We have chosen Istanbul as the venue for this because there are innovative examples of youth efforts to revitalise the urban environment in Istanbul, the Towards Carfree Cities Conference in Istanbul will provide access to venues at a reduced cost; and Turkey is particularly important in the discussion of integrating various cultures into the fabric of European cities. The aims of this workshop are to promote youth involvement in local decision-making, to facilitate mutually beneficial exchange between emerging youth leaders, to learn about innovative initiatives that combat social exclusion; to increase the skills of young people involved in NGOs, and to foster intercultural cooperation in cities.
These goals will be achieved by a programme of workshops, site visits to local projects, presentations by experts and participants, and facilitated discussions. To promote efficient communication, health and energy, the normal daily programme will consist of presentations and discussions in the mornings, followed by site visits in the afternoons. At the beginning of the week, the programme will focus on learning about urban planning and its affects on social inclusion. The second half of the programme will be devoted to acquiring specific skills for young people participate in municipal policy making. One day of the workshop will be devoted to a hands-on project to assist a local urban environment initiative. This collective activity to assist an Istanbul community project will not only help to publicise innovative project but will also foster responsibility and understanding for one another among participants.
Purpose of the meeting in the organisation:
The YIUE workshop meeting will bring together emerging leaders in our international network to study strategies for the inclusion of young people in urban development policy discussions and to exchange ideas, experiences and skills for promoting urban environments which are inclusive towards young people. We expect that the workshop will be a key step in developing a new set of youth leaders in our network.
Also, the workshop will be our first youth meeting in South Eastern Europe. Over the past two years, we have seen a sharp increase in activity and interest from youth organisations in Turkey and in nearby countries in the Balkan and Caucasus regions. This meeting will give our network an excellent opportunity to network with new and innovative groups, to build the capacity of youth NGOs in the region and to broaden cultural horizons of our Central European network groups.
Preparation (meetings, venues, number of planning participants and their countries, preparatory documents):
Five young people within the WCN network from Armenia, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Sweden and Turkey will plan and prepare the workshop, designing materials and detailed plans for workshops, inviting expert presenters, recruiting the participants and securing the logistical details. There was an initial planning meeting in Istanbul on April 24-25, 2007. After that, the international leadership team will meet by conference calls and Internet chats on a weekly basis. The team will divide up specific tasks and make decisions through a consensus decision-making project used at WCN meetings. Once the participant list is finalised, participants will receive an orientation packet and be prepared to give presentations about their experiences and activities in the field of youth involvement in urban development.
Follow-up:
All participants will meet at the end of the workshop to evaluate it and suggest improvements for future seminars. The leadership team will also hold a follow-up meeting after the seminar. These meetings will address the evaluation of the seminar and suggestions for improvements, follow-up activities of the participants and the implementation of new cross-border projects developed at the seminar. Evaluation comments by organisers and participants will be collated into a manual for other groups to use in planning similar seminars. (WCN has done this before with our conference organising manual, which has been used successfully to plan several international conferences.) As a follow-up to the seminar, participants will give presentations to their local groups, including information about the other participating countries and youth activities there, using video recordings from the workshop.
As of June, 2007, Justin is now the coordinator of the exchange. You can reach him at justin worldcarfree.net
Participants (27 total):
Full details of the participants can be found here.
Armenia:
- Hamo Danielyan
- Edgar Arakelyan
Bosnia-Herzegovina:
- Tihomir Dakic
- Natasa Crnkovic
Croatia:
- Marija Prsha
- Bernard Ivcic
Czech Republic:
- Justin Hyatt (leadership team member)
- Jan Valeska
- Bas Ruyters
Germany:
- Susanne Dähner
- Silvia Gonzales
Hungary:
- István Koch
- Veronika Szabadkai
- Ráhel Takáts
Italy:
- Margherita Drago
- Emiliana Porto
- Roberta Lombardi
Russia:
- Alexey Tcharykov
- Anna Tanganova
Serbia:
- Danijel Vuckovic
- Jadranka Ilic
Sweden:
- Liv Markström (leadership team member)
- Camille Delepierre
- Alfred Hallmert
Turkey:
- Meltem Parlak (leadership team member)
- Burge Elvan Erginli
- Erman Topgül
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