FINAL WORKSHOP OF THE CATALYST PROJECT IN ELBLĄG (14-15.07.2022)

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!