If your organization would like to take part in this exchange, please fill in the partnership agreement and send it to
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or by fax to +381 11 3239486 till 25th of August.
CDN Executive Committee will overview all applications and by respecting geographical balance and interest of CDN decide upon the partners in this exchange. You will receive the answer before 1st of September 2007.
Summary of the Project
This event aims to gather young people from all over Europe, with the special accent to participants from SEE countries and rural areas, to meet, debate, learn about each others culture, learn about different views and exchange views on their situation, limits to their involvement in the society and problems they are facing in respect of their equality and human rights.
As green environmental networks, FYEG and CDN cover a wide range of environmental and social issues, treating them with equal importance. Genetic modification belongs to environmental issues, but goes far beyond this category: it affects major problems in the field of agriculture, health, law, human rights and especially the problem set of the rights of future generations.
Even if we cannot deal with all these problems, we feel that GMOs and its alternative Organic Agriculture are not introduced to the public and youth well enough and this especially goes for Eastern European countries going through changes in past years rapidly. Committed to educate youth, we wish to raise awareness about the GMOs and the danger they imply and give positive overview of its alternative Organic agriculture production.
This will be a celebration of cultures, opportunity to meet and share ideas and opinions, but as well an important step forward to share of knowledge about future of the rural areas, threats and opportunities, especially related to contradictions coming regarding the battle between organic food production and genetically modified food.
Theme(s) and objectives:
The main themes we are aiming to address at this exchange are: youth participation in society, with accent on possibilities and advantages in light of relation urban and rural, future of rural areas in light of pros and cons of GMOs and organic agriculture, value of diversity and importance of cultural exchange and understanding in European integration context and building partnerships for the future in light of using the conclusions and knowledge coming of this event to develop future cooperation in the region and wider in Europe.
This event objective is to:
Øto gather young people from all over Europe, with the special accent to participants from SEE countries and rural areas, to meet, debate, learn about each others culture, learn about different views and exchange views on their situation, limits to their involvement in the society and problems they are facing in respect of their equality and human rights
Øto educate youth and raise awareness about the GMOs and the danger they imply and give positive overview of its alternative organic agriculture production.
Øto discuss and learn more about problems that young people are facing in rural areas, social phobias, misunderstandings and even discrimination
Øto evaluate the opportunities in Europe for cooperation and development of common ideas and exchange between young people and present the current possibilities and think of the new directions that can boost this European integrations process, rural and urban areas, cross-cultural and cross-border cooperation.
Øto share of knowledge and opinions about future of the rural areas, threats and opportunities, especially related to contradictions coming regarding the battle between organic food production and genetically modified food.
Øto celebrate diversity of cultures and learn more about each other using this opportunity to present and enjoy different customs, traditions, behavior and values and build a friendship for future
Activities foreseen (implementation, including preparatory and evaluation activities):
The preparations have already begun while working on the application which enabled us to develop draft agenda and move into setting up of the activity plan. In late spring we aim to start with active communications between the contacts of the partners and make the necessary time-line for whole preparation period. Next step would be to agree with partners to select their group and get them on line at the e list for participants.
Parallel, the group leaders working on the agenda, including the technical issues (insurance, visa, insurance, travel planning, accommodation and meals, etc.) and program issues (experts to be invited, division of tasks and responsibilities, planned input and expected results, methodology for good implementation of objectives, cover of all the topics with daily work, etc.). Both aspects of the agenda will be finalised at the advance planning visit.
Implementation will be based on detailed agenda (the draft is being attached) which will cover the educational part, giving input from leaders and experts on the topics, exchange views part, where the participants will be actively creating the content by giving their own experience, opinion and knowledge to the table and cultural exchange part, where we aim to celebrate the diversity of cultures, show the differences and value of this diversity in Europe. In addition we will explain the current situation and the opportunities in Europe for young people, including the youth in action program and encourage ideas on concrete future cooperation that can be attached to the youth programmes in Europe.
Evaluation will be done through questionnaires and daily feedback sessions. In addition, we are going to organise a session with games that will enable us to visually get impression of quality of impact that this event gave to the participants.
Concrete daily activities and which working methods you intend to use:
We are planning to invite experts on GMOs and organic agriculture to give lectures and held workshop, . We are planning to include plenary debates, small-group discussions, thematic workshops and games. We aim to invite participants from all parts of Europe; based on balanced geographic distribution. This meeting will provide opportunity for EU-citizens to get to learn more about South-Eastern Europe and challenges that Young People and whole society is facing due to changes and development.
Call for CDN group participants
CDN is looking for 4 participants for the Youth Exchange “Youth perspectives on rural development – Organic agriculture vs. GMO’s” This project will take place from 6th till 13th of June 2008 in Ohrid, Macedonia. The participants should be from following countries: Croatia, Montenegro and Kosovo.
The advantage (but not the condition) is to have green organisation background and the experience with the topics of the event. Considering that this is a youth event the participants will not be younger then 18 and older then 25.
This weekend, on Ohrid we had a good and productive meeting that resulted with draft agenda of the conference and quite a big list of the tasks still to accomplish in order to have a quality exchange in June. Besides 3 lectures that we are planning, discussion groups, workshops… we wanted to ensure that participants have opportunity to get to know Ohrid, it’s surrounding, local culture and customs, so we planned 2 excursions and ensured enough free time. We hope you will enjoy it…
In general agenda that we planned seems good, prep team members are motivated and we have excellent balance of experienced prep members and newcomers.
Present on the prep team meeting:
Revolt, Bosnia – Milana Djukanovic
Zelena omladina, Serbia – Vesna Jusup
Youth club of Bulgarian green party – Ekatarina Kovacheva
FYEG – Charlotte Gasser
DEM Youth, Macedonia – Jasmina Lavcenska
CDN – Stevan and Mika
Mediterranean SOS Network and Romanian Young Greens group leaders were not able to participate.
