For the Enter! project, access to social rights for young people cannot be ensured and promoted without the voices of young people. This is why the project foresees every 3 – 4 years, meetings of young people that experience disadvantage and that provide, through their participation, their input to the policies and programmes put into place within Enter!.
The first meeting was organised in 2011 and involved over 180 participants, mostly of whom were young people from the local Enter! projects. The aim of the meeting was to provide input to the policy recommendations.
The second meeting was organised in 2015 and focused on how young people and youth work can be involved in bringing these recommendations to the local level.
Enter! Youth Meeting (2011)
In September 2011, the youth sector organised the Enter! youth meeting, an international three-day meeting gathering some 180 young people, youth workers, youth researchers, policy makers and representatives of the project partners with the aim to provide them with the opportunity and the space to voice their opinions, and share their experiences about access to social rights in Europe as a contribution to the development of youth policies in the Council of Europe.
From 30 June to 3 July 2015 the European Youth Centre of the Council of Europe in Strasbourg offered young people, especially those experiencing discrimination, exclusion and violence in their environment, the opportunity to have their voices heard on solutions for improving their access to social rights.
180 young people, youth workers and local and regional authorities’ representatives from all over Europe participated in the Enter! Youth Meeting, in order to learn and share experiences about social rights, situations and responses in other countries, as well as about the work of the Council of Europe in this field. This youth meeting was part of the Council of Europe’s Enter! project on the access of young people to social rights, which aims to support youth work and youth policy responses to situations of exclusion, discrimination and violence affecting young people.
The strategic role of this youth meeting was to discuss the Recommendation of the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe to the Member States on the access of young people from disadvantaged neighbourhoods to social rights, which has been adopted in January 2015 and to support its promotion and implementation at all levels.
The main objectives of the meeting were:
To provide young people with the opportunity to have their voice heard and to be associated with the work of the Council of Europe;
To learn about young people’s experiences of access to social rights;
To share youth work and youth policy practices and responses to situations of exclusion, discrimination and violence affecting young people;
To elaborate further on the needs and possibilities for the implementation of the Committee of Ministers Recommendation to the member states on the access of young people from disadvantaged neighbourhoods to social rights;
To collect proposals for future orientations of the Council of Europe’s work in the area of young people’s access to rights, autonomy and social inclusion.
The programme of the meeting was specifically conceived for a youth dimension, providing space for both individual and group reflection and debate, encouraging exchange of practices and inputs.
The Enter! Youth Meeting was an opportunity for young people to learn more about other realities, social rights and the Council of Europe. The meeting was also an opportunity for young people to communicate in an intercultural environment and participate in policy making, by making a contribution to questions related to social rights. Furthermore, young people discovered Strasbourg and local organisations and services, shared realities, activities, talents and hobbies and got motivated to be more active in their communities.
The meeting resulted in a message sent to the Council of Europe.
Read more:
Proposals from the participants on the implementation of the CM Recommendation on the access to social rights of young people from disadvantaged neighbourhoods
