The steering group for a possible future Council of Europe youth campaign for revitalising democracy met for a 2nd time on 11-12 May 2021 online.

This time, its discussions were guided by the decisions of the Joint Council of Youth (CMJ) from last March, when several member states underlined the undisputed importance of the topic the CMJ had chosen for a possible campaign, even more relevant in the context of the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic. For member states, however, priority must be given to post-Covid recovery plans for young people at national level as it is they who had been disproportionately impacted by the pandemic.

The steering group thus explored new and creative ways of engaging young people and member states in promoting democracy, meaningful youth participation, and digitalisation in 2022 at both national and European levels.

2022 could well be a very exciting year for the youth sector: not only will it celebrate its 50th anniversary, it may also be the initiator of a series of inspiring activities for young people and their organisations to revitalise democracy, promote meaningful youth participation, and explore the impact of digitalisation.

The Youth Department set up a working group of experts to support the process of promoting and making AI literacy more accessible in the youth field; its members will address some of the needs voiced by youth organisations and educators, linked with AI literacy resources, with the aim to transform the conclusions from the seminar AI: How can youth take part? by guiding the production of AI literacy tools for young people.

The working group gathers 12 experts from various University based initiatives, civil society, young programmers, hacktivists and online activists, trainers in Human Rights Education and others.

A study will also provide an overview of the existing initiatives, programmes and specific tools and resources on AI literacy education for young people. It will focus on the key approaches used within these existing examples of actions for AI literacy, as well as, summarise the issues and opportunities of applying such initiatives, tools, resources in the Council of Europe context.

It aimed at raising awareness on the connection between environmental protection/sustainability and respect of Human Rights, as well as to support the participants in their efforts on climate advocacy and Human Rights in their local communities.

The activity gathered active young people in the field of climate change from 10 countries from Europe and beyond. It consisted of webinars and an e-learning space hosted on the youth e-learning platform of Council of Europe. The second webinar focused on climate change activism and youth participation, when the participants exchanged ideas on climate litigation and other types of advocacy which youth organisations can undertake on national and international level.

54 representatives of ten teams from local communities – partners of the project “Youth for Democracy in Ukraine”

Representatives of public authorities, youth councils, NGOs and youth groups discussed future co-operation of local teams in order to strengthen youth participation. The participants were introduced with the “RMSOS” (rights, means, space, opportunity and support) model reflected in the recommendation CM/Rec(2004)13 on the participation of young people in local and regional life and applied it to their project, evaluating the five factors affecting youth participation in their communities.

Within the Council of Europe Action Plan for Azerbaijan, the Youth Department is implementing a regional training course to support participative and rights-based youth policy. 

The EYF organised an information session on Pilot Activities, which are projects that address issues affecting young people in a specific local community.

Over 30 representatives from local and national youth NGOs took part in the session, which included a general presentation of the EYF and its support opportunities, but focused mostly on the pilot activity grant, its criteria, and concrete examples and recommendations for successful applications.

Information sessions are regularly organised by the EYF, as part of its effort to support youth NGOs to submit quality projects and towards increasingly higher success rates in applications.

The Programming Committee on Youth has made decisions on a new batch of Pilot Activities, assessed after the 28 February cut-off date.

22 projects from 13 member states were supported, 8 were given the opportunity to resubmit the application and 8 were rejected.

Unlike international activity and annual work plan grants, which have 2 fixed deadlines, pilot activity applications may be submitted throughout the year, and several cut-off dates are set by the EYF, reflecting the interventive nature of supported projects. The latest cut-off date was 30 May and the next one will be on 1 September.