The history and background of youthNET, all the projects and actions made possible by our goodwill, and goodwill of Youth in Action, Europe for Citizens, Central European Initiative, European Youth Foundation, for agreeing with us that the ideas you read below, are actually great ideas, and they helped us implementing them .
2001 The New Millenium : A New Hope
youthNET has its birth, not as a network, not as a pool of likeminded NGOs, just as a project, the idea behind it to develop civil society organisations in South East Europe, when finally the turmoil of over a decade of war seemed over and it was time to build and to rebuild. Hence the youthNET South East Europe was created by our Austrian partners, Interklulturelles Zentrum. The successful key to that project as to all the following youthNET projects and eventually network, is that it didn't have the patronising attitude of going to South East Europe to bring and enlighten the masses, rather the opposite. While there was a number of seminars and trainings to empower local civil society working with youth, there were also many networking opportunities with fellow organisations based in the EU, so that they could learn from each other and start co-operation as equals, recognising that turmoil of former Jugoslavia had actually by itself developed a very strong sense of civil society and very skilled individuals in the fields of social and youth work. It was a great success, creating partnerships that to this day are strong and efficient, with the extra ingredient of a human dimension called friendship. There was where the name youthNET was born.... but the story doesn't end here.
2004 youthNET CIS .youthNET Strikes Back.
That's right, three years of success in South East Europe, pushes the youthNET project further and to repeat the good practice in some of the countries of the Commonwealth of Independent States, namely Belarus, Russia, Ukraine. Mobility, Information, Empowerment and Peer Learning, are the key to the success of youthNET CIS, bringing together grassroot and not so experienced organisations from both Eastern Europe and European Union, and allow them to grow together. Once again the youthNET project strikes a bull's eye.
2007 Creative Partnerships. The Return of youthNET.
After some time, not absent, but also not totally focused on South East Europe, youthNET comes back with yet another project Creative Partnerships, another long term project, to take the previous youthNET SEE project a step higher, now that many organisations are created, are trained, are strong and sustainable, focus on regional networking among them and strengthen co-operation opportunities with fellow organisations in the EU, establishing working groups on: "Environment and Peace", "Art and Culture" , "Tolerance through Local Participation" Needless to say that its success was to bring onto the partnerships the elements of local impact and made existing organisations even stronger. Which ends the project trilogy, accompanied by a number of shorter yet just as important episodes, such as
Balkan Train, New(s) for Use, and Protect Youth and many more. now what to do with such a strong group of likeminded organisations, experienced in working together, in being a team and even with insider's tradition... Read on.
2009. youthNET a network of European SEEtizens.
Summary of the previous episodes: youthNET South East Europe starts as project, the project is repeated in CIS, the project is improved in SEE Creative Partnership
s. The last episode left a question open "What to do now?" and "What to do with all these strong and empowered organisations?" Again the answer comes from Interkulturelles Zentrum, lets organise a series of four think tank seminars, in order to decide what to do. Must say it wasn't easy, but by the end, youthNET from a brand project, became a brand network, with its official partners, its official Memorandum of Co-operation and a two year action plan that should take us through 2010-11 and then we shall see.
2009/2010: Glocal Europe, Our Campaign.
One thing is to be partners in one or more projects, another is to be a member of a network, therefore some teambuilding is in order, especially if you are a network involving so many different and field specialist civil society organisations. Find a common ground, find something to work on all together regardless of means
. But course, a campaign, yes but on what topic? What have in common social work, democracy, human right, environment, urban and rural development? but of course participation, without participation none work. So a campaign on youth participation, create videos, slogans and photographs that aim at promoting youth participation, from the Urals to Portugal, youthNET as a network spoke with one voice, we managed, we dealt with it, and can well be damn proud about it!
2010: youthNET for News.
Empowerment is a never stopping process, so here is youthNET4news, help young people which actually is an ongoing project about raising the awareness of young people and youth organisations about being media literate, as in understanding mass media, and at the same to be promoters and providers of information and to be the media themselves through the tools available, especially new media, therefore look out for our blog, website, youtube channel for further updates, soon there will be Some quite big news.
After some time, not absent, but also not totally focused on South East Europe, youthNET comes back with yet another project Creative Partnerships, another long term project, to take the previous youthNET SEE project a step higher, now that many organisations are created, are trained, are strong and sustainable, focus on regional networking among them and strengthen co-operation opportunities with fellow organisations in the EU, establishing working groups on: "Environment and Peace", "Art and Culture" , "Tolerance through Local Participation" Needless to say that its success was to bring onto the partnerships the elements of local impact and made existing organisations even stronger. Which ends the project trilogy, accompanied by a number of shorter yet just as important episodes, such as Balkan Train, New(s) for Use, and Protect Youth and many more. now what to do with such a strong group of likeminded organisations, experienced in working together, in being a team and even with insider's tradition... Read on.
