Educational Activities

Call for Local Actions: Mobilising Youth for Participation

CDN News, Educational Activities, Uncategorized

Cooperation and Development Network Eastern Europe is happy to announce the third step of the annual work plan “We are the future, but we are here NOW!”. The call for local actions is an opportunity for the youth organisations or a group of young people that participated in the previous stage of the project to submit the applications consisting of the Local Action Plans and Budget.

The 3rd part of the project, “Mobilising Youth for Participation” aims to give space to youth to reclaim fight for democracy by raising awareness about importance of civic education and youth participation. Local actions will contribute to the objectives of:

  • Engaging young people in shaping democratic decision making processes in their local communities with direct participation of youth in them and promotion of youth inclusion.
  • Creating a network of activists and organisations for future collaboration and transfer of knowledge.
  • Raising visibility of young people and mobilising them for a common cause of ensuring a better future for all youth by giving voice and agency to them.
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Call for the Additional Prep Team members of the Work Plan “We are the future, but we are here NOW!”

CDN News, Educational Activities, Member Organizations

Cooperation and Development Network (CDN) is announcing an open call for members of preparatory team (prep-team) for the second international activity of the Work Plan “We are the future, but we are here NOW!”  which will take place on 8-12th of June 2022 in Riga, Latvia. More information on the project you can find here. Please, read this information carefully before applying.

If you are young person from Albania, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria,  Croatia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Estonia, Georgia, Greece, Kosovo*,  Latvia, Lithuania, Hungary, Moldova, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Poland, Romania, Russia, Slovenia, Slovakia, Serbia, Turkey or Ukraine and you are interested in the topic of the event, you are more than welcome to apply to volunteer as a member of this preparatory team. Prep-team members should speak English, be available during the preparation periods, be responsible about fulfilling their tasks, have good organisational skills, be good team players and committed to the aims of the project and CDN’s values and be familiar with non-formal education methods. See the preliminary agenda of event to get acquainted with the amount of sessions that will be developed.

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Open call for Participants: International Activity “Why to participate”

CDN News, Educational Activities, Member Organizations

Cooperation and Development Network Eastern Europe is announcing a call for Participants for the international activity “Why to participate”.

The meeting will take place between 11-16th April in Skopje, North Macedonia (10th and 17th are travel dates to and from Skopje).

The project is the first phase of our annual work plan “We are the future, but we are here NOW!” and is going to focus on the providing participants with knowledge of the importance of youth participation.

This activity aims to:

  1. Discover the history and function of nation-states in order to understand the current state of affairs in the Eastern Europe;
  2. Provide a space for participants to understand how their countries function;
  3. Understanding the big diversity of roles of, and connections between each citizen in a democracy;
  4. Discussing diverse ways of affecting the policy-making in the Eastern Europe, by exploring worldwide practices.
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Call for Feminists in the Environmental Movement: Activity Assistant

CDN News, Educational Activities, Working groups

CDN is opening the call for the activity assistant of one year long project “Feminists in the Environmental Movement” on Gender and Climate. You can find more information about the project here.

This is a paid, part-time, home office based position, starting from the mid February 2022.

Working time: average of 4 hours/week, flexible working hours (some activities might take place during weekends)
Remuneration: 1700 EUR, for the whole length of the project.
 

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Call for Feminists in the Environmental Movement: Local Reporters

CDN News, Educational Activities, Uncategorized, Working groups

CDN is opening the call for the Local Reporters for one year long project “Feminists in the Environmental Movement”. You can find more information about the project here.

This is a paid, part-time, home office based research position, starting from the late-mid February 2022. We are accepting applications by the 23rd of January 23:59 CET.

Working time: average of 2 hours/week, Spring-Summer 2022, flexible working hours (some activities might take place during weekends)
Remuneration and per diem: from EUR 350 to EUR 500, depending on the country the reporter lives in and does the interview in.

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Feminists in the Environmental Movement (FEM)

CDN News, Educational Activities, Working groups

How climate change affects the women in the rural areas of Eastern Europe

The struggles women in rural areas of the Eastern Europe face are usually overlooked when discussing climate change. Even though women are responsible for 60% of world’s food supply by working in harsh conditions in fields, they are often silenced by figures of authority and the wider society alike. In rural communities, it is notable that climate change significantly affects economic yield of agriculture, and first ones to feel that impact are women. Young people, on the other hand, are migrating from the rural to urban areas. In deeply rural communities, people often depend on natural resources for everyday life. With the arrival of industries, polluters and investors who strive for profit, lifes of people in rural communities are labeled as less important than profit. The investors not only pollute, but destroy the ecosystems that have grown around them. As we can see from examples of brave women all around Eastern Europe, they are ready to fight to protect local natural resources, even if at times they face violence. Their stories deserve to be heard by wider audience, to break the stigma of traditionally labeled “powerless woman”, promote eco-activism in all communities and release women from the shackles of their oppressors. This is why CDN, with its Gender WG decided to join the GEF project “Feminists in the Environmental Movement” with the following activity.

The aim of the activity is to raise voices of young women in rural areas that are being affected by climate change and its causes, as well as share positive stories and bring attention to importance of addressing climate change in an intersectional way.

In this project, we will conduct a 1 day training on journalism for 7 young people from Eastern and Central Europe (CDN MO and PO members, WG members). The training will happen on the 7th of March in Tbilisi, Georgia and will be attached to CDN’s WG meeting, conference and GA. After the training the participants will visit rural areas in their countries that are impacted most by climate change and environmental problems, research and document how they affect young women and make interviews with them. The reporters would be trained to facilitate open and honest conversations and empowering the young women by giving them space to share their experiences with the wider public.

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CALL FOR HOST ORGANISATIONS: “We are the future, but we are here NOW!”

CDN News, Educational Activities, Uncategorized

CDN is announcing a call for host organisations for the 2022 International Activities of Work Plan “We are the future, but we are here NOW!”. Detailed information about the project can be found at the Project Page.

All the Member and Partner Organisations are eligible to apply.

Details of the International Activities:

1st phase –  Why to participate 11-16th of April 2022

The first event of the Work plan is a 6 day long international activity with the aim to equip youth workers from Eastern Europe with knowledge of the importance of youth participation. 

2nd phase –  Skills for massive youth activation 13-17th of June 2022

The second activity of the WP is a 5 day international training course focusing on preparing the participants for the 3rd stage in depth through enhancing their skills. With this phase, we aim to equip youth workers from Eastern Europe with skills of engaging young people in lives of their communities

The host organisations are expected to:

  • Provide logistical support (help us with finding accommodation and venue, arranging catering, travel, visas, local speakers etc.);
  • Be there in case of emergency (someone getting sick, urgent purchases, extra needs, etc.;
  • Delegate two volunteers to become part of the local prep-team, that will be present at the event all the time, as well as assist at the prepteam meetings 2 months before the events.

If your organisation has capacities, time and motivation required to host the first or the second International Activities, please fill out this FORM (CLOSED).

Deadline for filling in the form is 20th of December 2021 23:59 CET.  

The Executive Committee of CDN will assess the applications and make a decision, which you’ll be informed about the latest by 14th of January.

Do not hesitate to contact us at project.coordinator@cdnee.org should you have any questions about the call or the application process.


 For more information about rights and responsibilities of a Host Organisation check this document.

Open call for Participants: Study Session “Work that Works for all: Shaping Europe’s Future of Work”

Educational Activities, Member Organizations, News

Cooperation and Development Network Eastern Europe (CDN) and Federation of Young European Greens (FYEG) are announcing a call for participants for the Study Session “Work that Works for all: Shaping Europe’s Future of Work”.

The event will take place during 15-20 November in the European Youth Center Budapest (EYCB), Hungary. Travel dates to and from Budapest are 14 and 21 November.

With this activity, we aim to empower 35 young Europeans in accessing their social rights – the right to decent work – in order for them to become agents of change in their local communities through human rights education in the pandemic world. The aims of the study session are:

  • To explore the legal, structural and societal history, context, challenges and barriers young people face while accessing their right to decent work in different European countries;
  • To deepen participants’ understanding of youth unemployment and youth precarity, their social (political, economic) and individual (physical and mental health) consequences;
  • To explore the existing opportunities and initiatives for young people in accessing work related rights, as well as to develop participants’ understanding and solidarity about the social and economic conditions their peers are facing;
  • To equip the participants and their organisations with the tools for countering the challenges and consequences of  inaccessible Social rights.
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Work Plan “We are the future, but we are here NOW!”

Activities, CDN News, Educational Activities, Member Organizations, News

Project background

At the Strategic Planning Meeting of CDN in March 2020 the topical areas of interest of the MOs and POs of CDN were identified as follows: climate, gender, cities, digitisation, migration, food, health and labour rights, but the work on these and other topics is pretty limited in the Eastern Europe due to the ever-shrinking space for the civil sector.

We saw that even before the COVID-19 pandemics, the civil and political rights of majority of the Eastern Europeans were not guaranteed. Protests against number of governments or against particular decisions are being confronted with unbalanced police force in Georgia, Serbia and Greece. In Belarus, Russia, Azerbaijan and Turkey the space for the civil society is non-existent and the oligarchic governments of other countries from the region are following the bad example of the governments of the above mentioned countries and misusing the pandemic related measures to restrict the rights to protest and at the same time ignoring the outcries for help from the civil sector, as well as the general public. Meanwhile, the levels of trust towards the states and understanding the procedures behind the speeches of the decision-makers is decreasing, as the Eastern Europeans have to think about the economic and health related issues. According to National Democracy Institute (NDI.org), less than one third of young people express satisfaction and trust some political option to represent their needs. We believe, that the pandemic brought out on a daylight the symptoms of deep political crisis that the Eastern Europe (EE) is suffering from for decades and one of the solutions to improve the situation is a massive education of the young people on the importance of their participation in the life of their country. Only by practicing true, informed democracy we will be able to build resilient and just Eastern Europe, where the human rights are respected and youth life flourishing.

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RUMB Regional Meeting 2021

CDN News, Educational Activities, Regional Work

Our rights and freedoms are in our hands!

The regional meeting of representatives of Member Organisations and associates from the RUMB region (Russia, Ukraine, Moldova, Belarus), organized by CDN and hosted by the Republican Center Gutta-Club, was held in Chisinau (Moldova) on 20-24 July. The participants worked together on common problems and common solutions concerning the civil and political rights of youth in these countries.

Despite the fact that the group consisted of people from different fields of activity with different backgrounds, the desire to participate in Green activism and the desire for change are what united the participants of the meeting. The event helped young people expand their knowledge of civic and political rights and meet like-minded people from neighbouring countries who want to take the first step towards a better, fair reality for all.

The program of the first day included interactive lectures, where the participants learned about a brief history of civil and political rights in the region, discussed the work of institutions that should protect these rights, compared the situation in the region and worked in groups to identify regional organizations and institutions ensuring the observance of these rights in each country. Moreover, young activists had the opportunity to listen to a lecture by Doctor of Science, expert-analyst Alexander Makukhin “Ensuring civil and political rights in the RUMB countries: pre-election / post-election perspective” and have a discussion with the lecturer and each other. In addition, thanks to the activities of the organizers and the facilitators, the participants got to know each other better during the team building activities, city quest and group reflection sessions. The first day ended with the “Fair of Organizations”, where participants presented their organisations and exchanged experiences of volunteering in them.

During the second day, participants analyzed the tools and methods for claiming their rights, analyzing their effectiveness, accessibility and security in each of the countries using the example of specific cases. Further, having studied the institutional barriers to upholding civil and political rights in the RUMB countries in the form of an interactive game, the participants divided into teams, systematized the information received in the form of a poster, in which they reflected their thoughts and ways to effectively achieve goals and effectively resist violations of rights. After discussing the posters, the participants gathered for a group reflection and ended the day by watching and discussing documentaries about the major political events in Ukraine (d \ f “Euromaidan. Rough editing”) and in Belarus (d \ f “Sisters of protest”).

The third, final, day began with the session: “The role of international solidarity in the fight for our rights.” During the session, the young people discussed ways of expressing solidarity and concrete actions that can be used to solve the problem. As in the past days, in small groups, some cases were reviewed and posters were created on the topic. The conclusion of the whole discussion of the last day and the two previous ones was the identification of fundamental human rights, which, according to the group, are most often violated, and the creation of projects that contribute to changing this situation. Participants presented their ideas, suggesting creative ways: creating demonstrative role-playing board games, comics, and even envisioning new professions.

The meeting of young Greens of the region showed that by having an active civic position, one can always come to a consensus by discussing a problem and unite common efforts to solve it.

Ekaterina Chulkova
Volunteer of RC Gutta-club