During the last two days (14-15.07.2022) the CATALYST project partners had the pleasure and opportunity to participate in a workshop in Elbląg organised by the Światowid European Meeting Centre (Leader). The meeting was attended by representatives of the Association of Polish Municipalities Euroregion Baltic, Media Dizajn representing the Polish side of the consortium, Swedish representatives from: EU Office Skåne North East together with an invitee and representatives from Hassleholm Youth Center and representatives from two Universities: in Wismar (Germany) and Klaipeda (Lithuania).

During the workshop, the partnership team and invited guests continued to develop and produce two independent project ideas (albeit synergistic to each other) aimed at strengthening the youth sector and this group of beneficiaries in our member regions. Both future applications being prepared for the regular call for projects of the Interreg South Baltic 2021-2027 programme will aim to strengthen intergenerational dialogue, to ensure that young people have a greater say in decisions affecting their local communities. The vision behind both ideas is to directly involve and activate this social group in topics of importance to the younger generation, and the activities themselves are designed to combine education with practice, solving local problems with opportunities and experiencing the benefits of international cooperation. 

The current workshop in Elbląg took the form not only of project work on the development of new applications (their improvement and concretisation), but during the second day, in order to even better match our ideas with the real expectations and possibilities of young people, it took the form of a consultation meeting combined with brainstorming of the gathered consortium members together with invited youth representatives. This enabled us to directly confront the ideas generated so far and the seeds of future project activities with the actual needs and expectations of the future target group. During the dedicated consultation part, young people from Poland and Sweden were able to share their insights with us on an ongoing basis and enable us to make modifications to the planned activities, giving them a more appropriate shape acceptable to the young generation.

Such consultations are invaluable as they enable us to better tailor the planned scope of the project to the final audience and will continue before the final closure of the application.

Work is currently underway to recruit new consortium members - especially those representing local government units.

The idea behind our joint activities is to give the Year of Youth a more practical dimension by creating platforms for real youth involvement in local and supra-regional issues!

In this way, we also want to mark 2022, which is the European Year of Youth, a time to celebrate the post-pandemic period, to embrace with renewed vigour the future challenges facing European society and especially the young generation. 

Using the example set from above, we want to support this age group and the entire sphere of organisations working on its behalf to implement such important grassroots initiatives.  

Like the European Commission, which will coordinate a number of activities together with the European Parliament, Member States, regional and local authorities and youth organisations in order to enrich the younger generations with new skills for their professional development and to increase the number of young civic involvement in European society, we want to be a forerunner of this positive change on a smaller scale (in the Baltic Sea Region).  

The activities we have planned so far are in line with the four main objectives of the European Year of Youth, including:

- Overcoming the negative effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, highlighting new opportunities for young people coming from environmental and digital transformation. 

- Supporting young people, especially those with fewer opportunities, to become active and engaged European citizens. 

- Promoting opportunities for young people from the EU, national and regional authorities.

- Bringing a youth perspective to EU policy-making at all levels, in line with the EU Youth Strategy 2019-2027.

Thanks to all participants for their participation and commitment!

More information on new joint youth initiatives coming soon!

On 27.06.2022 there was held another online meeting of the CATALYST project partnership team from Poland, Lithuania, Sweden led by CSE Światowid. The partner meeting had a working character and was dedicated to the development of the concept of activities for the activation of the young generation and the technical side of the project workshop being prepared in Elblag on July 13-15, 2022.

During the meeting the team discussed the plan for the upcoming event, the possibility of inviting potential participants from outside the consortium (Lithuania, Denmark), plans for the course of the event including inspiration visits, consultations with local youth and the workshop part dedicated to the development of two independent concepts of youth projects:

1. The first one dedicated to strengthening democratic processes, involvement and social activism of the young generation using democracy festivals;

The vision of the project is to revitalise democracy by strengthening the links between the (political, social) EU system and the citizens, as well as to create spaces for dialogue and participation.

2. Development of a virtual promotion and online application showing places important or attractive for youth and which can be used by young people in the BSR countries.

The vision of the project is to promote the South Baltic area as an attractive place for leisure time activities and to present various paths for activation of the young generation based on local resources. By improving various national and local approaches/processes of building a targeted and dedicated offer for young people we want to contribute to the development of the area, be it in the field of tourism, culture and arts, start-ups (taking their first steps in business career) or building activation offer, which is currently not fully used and adjusted to the expectations of the young generation 

Both concepts are derived from local needs in the 4 countries and the result of the workshop in Wismar (Germany) and the experience of the partner from the implementation of previous projects.

Dedicated meeting in Elbląg will serve as a decisive event for the further fate of the two applications, during which we will confront the expectations and capabilities of the current consortium with the actual expectations and needs of the young generation in order to create the most effective project applications prepared within the new perspective of the Interreg South Baltic Programme. It is also a basis for concretisation of future project plans and exchange of views and local experiences.

On Friday, June 10th 2022, another meeting of the Catalyst project partner team took place. In the meeting took part partners from Poland (Association of Polish Communes Euroregion Baltic, Media Dizajn and Center for European Meetings "Światowid"), Germany (University of Wismar) and Sweden (Skane Nordost).

The CATALYST project is focused on building an international network and a platform for activating local institutions, authorities, organizations or other entities (including politicians) working for the involvement, better spending of time and involvement of young people in social, cultural and business life in the Baltic Sea Region. and seeing how local areas can be a friendlier environment for the younger generation. Joint activities undertaken by project members should allow participating organizations and their local supporters to be more active in the field of support/involvement of young people, establish cross-sector cooperation and help them in the future to revise the offer, consult it with young people - this way it will be better adapted to the needs and challenges identified by youth.

The project partners plan to prepare two project applications related to youth under the project. At this stage of preparing the project draft, the partners are looking for additional partners, both those with a full budget and associated partners.

The project leader discussed the next steps related to the formal part of the project, i.e. the procedure for reporting costs and substantive activities and the preparation of the so-called concept paper.

The last part was about the next physical workshop, which will take place in Elblag in July. Those interested in participating in the workshop and future applications are kindly asked to contact us. The workshop will take place on 13-14th of July 2022.

On May 24-25, 22, as part of the seed money Catalyst project, the first physical workshop was held, in which representatives from:

• Media Dizajn
• University of Wismar
• Center for European Meetings "Światowid" in Elbląg
• EU-kontor Skåne Nordost
• Association of Polish Communes Euroregion Baltic

The partners worked on the concept of the future application for the Interreg South Baltic program, which will open another call in autumn this year. The partners discussed the subject of youth but also considered various concepts for the final application. Together, they went through a few tasks during the workshop part. Among other things, it was an understanding of the needs of the group of project recipients or finding out what the goal of each partner is.

The schedule of the next meeting in Elbląg and the next steps in the project were also been planned.

The project is particularly important due to the theme of youth. The European Parliament and the Council have made 2022 the European Year of Youth! It is a time to celebrate the post-pandemic period, to embrace with renewed strength the future challenges facing European society. Throughout the year, the European Commission will coordinate a series of actions with the European Parliament, Member States, regional and local authorities as well as youth organizations to enrich young generations with new skills for their professional development and increase the number of young people in civic involvement in European society.
The new generations are the ones that will bring about change and take advantage of the digital and green revolution introduced by the Next Generation EU. In this context, the European Year of Youth will have four main objectives:

• Overcoming the negative effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, highlighting new opportunities for young people coming from the ecological and digital transformation.
• Supporting young people, especially those with fewer opportunities, to become active and committed European citizens.
• Promoting the opportunities of the EU, national and regional authorities among young people.
• Introduce a youth perspective to EU policy-making at all levels in line with the EU Youth Strategy 2019-2027.

The Joint Secretariat of the South Baltic Interreg will contribute to the celebration of the European Youth Year during an annual event at the end of September. One of the panel discussions of this event will focus on involving young people in regional development and Interreg cooperation as a celebration of the European Youth Year 2022 by finding a common language and vision. The panellists will include representatives of the Baltic Euroregion Youth Board and Youth Councils established under the South Baltic Youth Core Group Networks (SB YCGN) project, as well as an IVY volunteer from the Joint Secretariat.

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!