For the fourth year, the Cooperation and Development Institute and Connecting Youth platform partnered with Young Bled Strategic Forum. This year’s Forum was held in Ljubljana, Slovenia from the 26th to the 28th of August. Under the title “Democracy fit for the new age” the forum gathered promising young individuals from 20 different countries to discuss what it means to be democratic in changing environments.

Young BSF was created with the aim of connecting promising young individuals, it is a platform that gives participants an open and dynamic platform for discussion about the challenges of the present and the future, thus enabling the exchange of opinions between young people and also, through their active participation in the BSF, with established international figures. Thirty-six young people participated in this year’s conference, all in all from 20 different countries.

Ms Stela Ademi, CDI’s project manager joined Ms Lilla Judit Bartusze (Sustainable cities), Ms Staša Mesec (EUSAIR), Ms Kathryn Friedman and Mr Ferdinand Eimler (Global Diplomacy Lab) in the session “Joint solutions for joint challenges” moderated by Ms Irena Topalli, Tirana European Youth Capital 2022.

In her intervention, Ms Ademi focused on the most recent work of the Connecting Youth (CY) platform. CY focuses on the involvement of youth in policy-making by cultivating youth-led approaches that make youth part of the tables that count.

Ms Ademi highlighted why youth engagement is necessary and reflected on the need to voice up the most pressing issues to youth in a structured way, which includes evidence-based research and advocacy action at the regional level. Moreover, she emphasized how important it is to partner with the right stakeholders. Examples of synergy and cooperation between think tanks and youth councils were made, as well as concrete examples of youth advocacy.

The discussion was followed by a world cafe format session, in which the topics were explored in more details and a brainstorming process with multiple groups of Young leaders was moderated.

To learn more about the Young Bled Strategic Forum 2022 Edition click here.