Together with youth workers from Council of Europe member states, a representative of a Ukrainian youth centre from Zolotonosha, Cherkasy Region, is taking part in the Educational Forum for Youth Centres with the Council of Europe Quality Label. The Forum is being held at the Eco Centre Radulovački in Serbia from 20 to 25 September 2026.
The annual Educational Forum of the Council of Europe Quality Label programme provides a platform for educational and pedagogical staff working in youth centres to meet, exchange experience and strengthen the collective educational intelligence of the network. Training for educational teams in youth centres holding the Council of Europe Quality Label was launched in 2015. For several years now, at the invitation of the network, women youth workers from Ukraine have presented their experience and youth work practices at the Forum.
Oksana Cherviakova, founder of the ArtProstir Youth Centre in Zolotonosha and head of the Cherkasy branch of the Association of Youth Centres of Ukraine, took part in the Forum and presented the experience of organising recovery and integration camps for young people, as well as activities to support the regional network of youth workers:
“It was important for me to share our experience in organising youth camps and to present the activities of the network of youth workers in the Cherkasy region. This year, we organised a camp for colleagues from the Association branch and saw how important it is to have a shared space for dialogue, support and planning coordinated activities.
I met colleagues from other European countries and learned about the work of their centres. Such international meetings enable us to gain new tools for our work, maintain professional contacts and remain connected with colleagues from youth centres across Europe.
During the Forum, we discussed at length the challenges facing young people today. These include economic instability and the need for safe spaces for communication and personal development. For us, as youth workers, this means that we must constantly seek new approaches to working with young people.
A particular focus of the Forum was the development of critical thinking. This is an especially important skill today: it helps us to understand complex issues more deeply, deconstruct stereotypes and look at situations from different perspectives. The experience of the youth centres in Karlovci and Novi Sad, Serbia, was particularly valuable. They are highly active in the field of citizenship education and provide mentoring support to young people as they engage actively in community life, at a time when democratic processes require particular attention and young people need more information about the tools of democratic citizenship.”
Participation in the Forum was supported through the Council of Europe project Youth for Democracy in Ukraine: Phase IV. Co-operation between Ukrainian youth centres and the network of youth centres holding the Council of Europe Quality Label contributes to one of the project’s key outcomes: providing youth workers and administrative staff of youth centres in Ukraine with training in the practices and approaches used by Quality Label youth centres across Europe.
The project is implemented under the Council of Europe Action Plan for Ukraine “Resilience, Recovery and Reconstruction” 2023–2026.
Further information about the project, including news, youth-related resources and open calls to participate in project activities, is available here.
