What a week!
We have finished the Brussels phase of "Reclaiming Civic Space" project, which aims to promote youth civic space through youth work and human rights education.
We kicked of the second half of the week by the presentation on the work that the Council of Europe does to support youth civic space. Spyros PAPADATOS the newly elected Chair of the Advisory Council on Youth has presented the co-management system and the newly adopted Committee of Ministers' Recommendation on protecting youth civil society and young people, and supporting their participation in democratic processes.
The week will went on with diving deeper into human rights education, participants had an opportunity to try out organising different educational activities for each other, which would prepare them to create more learning opportunities for other young people back home.
Participants also had an opportunity to share a bit about their backgrounds, organisations and practices that they do back home.
The networking and practice market has hosted at least 20 different organisations and provided space for possible partnership building.
Special space was given to our colleagues from Amnesty International to present some of the advocacy practices on human rights education, Francesca CESAROTTI from Amnesty's Italian Section spoke about Advocacy projects, and Stasya DENISOVA from Amnesty's International Secretariat gave input about the upcoming Flagship Campaign on Right to Protest.
The latter part of the project enabled participants to sit down in the local groups and plan the actions together through theory of change. The actions will take various forms according to the local contexts and participants' interests and they will aim to promote youth civic space while ensuring participation of other young people.
The project is organized by Human Rights Education Youth Network and Amnesty International with the financial support of the European Youth Foundation of the Council of Europe and Italian National Agency on Erasmus+ and European Solidarity Corps.
This post does not necessarily reflect the official position of the Council of Europe, Amnesty International, or the Italian National Agency.
Special thanks goes to DROA Community HREYN's Belgian member for the logistical support, Council of Europe's Youth Department, and the Youth Partnership between Council of Europe and European Union for the supporting educational materials.