KICK-OFF CONFERENCE CATALYST PROJECT- START MAY 2022

On 06/05/2022, the Polish-German-Swedish team had the opportunity to meet online during the kick-off conference initiating activities of the project "CATALYST - Changemakers of Youth Environment and Perspectives in SB Area" implemented under the South Baltic Interreg Program - seed money.

The meeting was held under the leadership of the Światowid European Meeting Center (Elblag) acting as the project leader. The meeting was also attended by representatives of the Association of Polish Municipalities Euroregion Baltic, Media Dizajn Association (Szczecin), (EU-kontor Skåne Nordost (Sweden), University of Wismar (Germany). During it, the partners had the opportunity to learn more about the scope of their organizations' activities and possible areas of support for future activities aimed at supporting youth in the countries of the Baltic Sea region. It was also an incredible opportunity to discuss the application itself and the challenges ahead.

During the meeting, the role of the CATALYST initiative as a pilot action and a platform for the development of further final projects within the framework of future calls of the program dedicated to the development of international networks and platforms for the activation of local institutions, authorities, organizations or other entities working for the engagement, better spending of time and involvement of young people in social, cultural and business life in the South Baltic area was recalled. These activities are intended to allow the concretization of multidimensional cooperation in selected areas and to recognize how local areas can be a more welcoming environment for the younger generation, and the related opportunities to increase efforts to achieve this goal.

The joint activities undertaken by the project members should enable further organizations from PL, LT, DK, GE, SE and their local beneficiaries to become more active in the field of youth support/engagement while initiating or developing cross-sectoral cooperation and helping to revise the jointly developed offer. As part of the work on new concepts, we want to develop and test new methods and forms of consultation and dialogue with the young generation working on selected guiding themes - so that the offer addressed to this audience in a given theme is better suited to the needs, challenges and actual opportunities of the area.

At the same time, within the framework of the project, we want to promote the South Baltic area as an attractive place to spend leisure time and present various paths for activating the younger generation based on local resources. By improving various national and local approaches/processes for building a targeted and dedicated offer for youth, we want to contribute to the development of the area.

The South Baltic area has great potential as an attractive place for leisure and activation of young people, whether in the field of tourism, culture and art, startups (they take their first steps in their business careers) or building an activation offer that is currently not fully used and adapted to the expectations of the young generation (confirmed in 5 projects implemented by partners).

Currently, there is a lack of activation and leisure activities based on intersectoral dialogue and inclusion, joint construction and promotion of activation and leisure offerings focused on the needs of young people and modern challenges, such as digitization. Institutions of culture, art, tourism and activation of the young generation operating in the South Baltic area have not yet taken joint action to promote and develop activation offers throughout the South Baltic area.

What lies ahead in the project: a physical meeting of the consortium members in Wismar 24-25.05.2022. aimed at workshop work focusing on refining drafts of future application proposals.

Contact: If you have ideas and would like to get involved in the preparatory work of a youth project centered in this area, we invite you to contact the Association!

sekel@eurobalt.org.pl

+48 601 690 035

+48 607 334 119

If you are a young person or run an organization working for the benefit of young people and have ideas for possible activities in future projects - contact and arrange a meeting with our youth specialists:

Dawid Markun, STG ERB rep to the Euroregion Baltic Youth Board (ERB Youh Board).

Chief Youth Specialist at our Association

dawid.markun@eurobalt.org.pl
Dawid Jędrzejewski, deputy rep. of STG ERB in the Youth Council of the Euroregion Baltic (ERB Youh Board)

Youth Specialist at our Association

dawid.jedrzejewski@eurobalt.org.pl
More information about the initiative coming soon!