Report of Council of Members of the European Youth Forum

By Zoltán Lehoczki

From 26th to 29th April we spent three days in Brussels in the Council of Members of the
European Youth Forum. 

The opening day after the registration, we had a nice opening event regarding the future
of Europe, which tackled different topics like what is the role of the young generation in the
society entering the workforce or what is the future of democracy in Europe. 

On the second day, with the Opening of the meeting and the roll-call we opened the
General Assembly and the two-day work began. After the adoption of the agenda and the
adoption of the minutes of the last meeting, we had the opportunity to listen to the
progress report presented by the president of the European Youth Forum. Later, we could
attend smaller presentations about different parts of the progress report, which were held
in a “world café” format, about the topics we were most interested in. After a quick break,
we were on schedule to hold a workshop in the “Made in MOs” section, where
member organizations were able to show their achievements or just present themselves
in order to spark attention towards them. We were holding the workshop together
with the Federation of Young European Greens, also known as FYEG and Sandbag,
a not-for-profit climate change policy think tank based in Brussels and London.

The main topics of the workshop were environmental sustainability, how to combat climate
change on an organizational and on a personal level and methods and best practices in
international NGOs with concrete advices on how to develop a more sustainable organization.
In the first part of the workshop the participants were interactively involved in the
discussion/ presentation, when we asked them about their daily habits and we concluded how
sustainable they are. After that, we had a presentation about the key facts and figures about
climate change, followed by a presentation about tools and methods to help NGO-s be more
sustainable. At the end, we gathered in groups on 4-5 people to discuss how they could
implement the sustainable practices in their specific organizations. The total number
of participants was around 20-25, and everyone seemed to enjoy the workshop based on their
level of participation.

We also discussed and introduced new policies with the Assembly, like the long-awaited
Policy Paper on Sustainable Development, which lays down a bottomline for all the
member organizations to work on and adjust their sustainable practices in the future.
This policy recognizes the need for a sustainable development strategy and ensures that
the YFJ and all its member’s organizations will work in a more sustainable manner in the
future.

Apart from that, there was a position paper on the situation of Young people and Brexit, a
discussion about the future of Europe, and a motion on the political situation in Hungary.
Another important aspect of the Assembly was when we accepted the Macedonian Youth
Council as full members of the Youth Forum. It was a moving moment which showed the
compassion and togetherness of young people in Europe. In the end, after many hours of
long discussions in the two days, we closed the Assembly by announcing the next
meeting, which is going to take place in Novi Sad, Serbia in November and we closed the
day with a nice dinner and a social gathering afterward.