6 October 2022

Young people, youth organizations, youngsters, and civil society organizations have always been involved since the first edition of Tirana Connectivity Forum back in 2015. Under the title “Securely Connected”, on 26-28 September the 8th edition of Tirana Connectivity Forum took place in Tirana. CDI joined forces with the National Youth Congress of Albania and dedicated the 3d day of this forum entirely to youth under the joint vision “Secure and Future-proof Enlargement”.

Connecting Youth partners are an integral part of the Forum. Each year, one panel is dedicated to the promotion of the work carried out jointly by the six partners under this platform supported by Hanns Seidel Foundation. This year they could meet peers from different countries, network with regional and EU stakeholders attending the Forum and exchange on most pressing issues affecting youth in the region. On 26 September, CY partners visited the Tirana European Youth Capital (TEYC) premises. Firstly, they learned more about the story behind the Title, its eight programmes and how implementation on the ground is impacting youth. Together with the colleagues from TEYC/Albanian National Youth Congress and European Youth Forum, CY partners had a fruitful discussion and got some questions answered about the youth involvement in policy-making, the cooperation between youth and government, etc.

TCF is about bringing youth to the tables and foras that count. The third day kicked off with Ms Krisela Hackaj, Executive Director of CDI, underlining the importance of the Enlargement toolbox to include youngster groups not only as beneficiaries of this process in the future but as shapers and active contributors of EU policies and their programmes today. Only by involving the youngsters in all the stages of public policy both at the national, regional and EU levels, policymakers can ensure youth commitment and engagement - she emphasized.

This day was a great example of proving that think tanks and NGO-s can achieve great results by working on joint projects and Ms Aspasjana Kongo, General Coordinator of the Tirana European Youth Capital, enforced this idea by sharing with the audience the successes achieved by TEYC and the features of the good cooperation established between the institutions and civil society.

The first panel’s main objective was to deconstruct the process of building the Legacy of the title. Part of this discussion was Ms Dafina Peci, Director of the Tirana European Youth Capital, Mr Iount Sibian, President of the Western Balkans Follow-up Committee at EESC, and Tom Matthew, Board Member of the European Youth Forum.

Mr Matthew argued that in general there are very few consultations with young people and the consequences of this are massive, not only for young people but for democracy as well. For this reason, TEYC 2022 is and should be a mechanism that connects youngsters and institutions in the WBs to work together.

Panelists of Panel 5 tried to answer the question “Why should Youth be part of Policy-Making? Mr Tobias Köck, the Vicepresident of European Movement International emphasized the importance of youth vocational and educational training to increase youth employability in different sectors. Ms Angela Angjelovska, the representative of the National Youth Council of Macedonia, representing in the panel the work of the Connecting Youth Platform, expressed her concern about the fact that youth organizations are not being heard despite their ability and expertise to help in policymaking. To this end, she presented the main conclusions of the research Paper “Sectoral Youth Employment Opportunities” as a way to contribute to better and more inclusive policies for youth.

Ms Kleina Kasanai, General Director at the Albanian National Youth Agency focused on the concept of connectivity, the keyword of this Forum as well. She highlighted the importance of internal state coordination in order to make the region’s institutions much stronger.

The last panel of this day aimed to present scenarios on co-governance mechanisms that allow youth objectives to be mainstreamed in policy-making. And OPENS was a great initiative from which we could learn a lot. OPENS representative, Vukašin Grozdanović shared his experience in working on how not to let enthusiasm and activities go together with the title. Mr Grozdanović stated that to secure the legacy of the EYC title we should invest in long-lasting programmes which should be carefully planned. Also, moving the programmes to the national level can be a good mechanism to secure the legacy, this proved to be very successful in Serbia after the Novisad EYC title ended.

Ivan Neirotti, Policy Officer at European Youth Forum proposed his suggestions regarding the mechanisms that help youth involvement in policy-making. He emphasized that youth makes a big bunch of soft connectivity and without it, there is no social culture connectivity.

Marco Costantino, from Puglia Region, Youth Policies Department policies, illustrated the best practices from the Youth Policies Department of the Apulia Region, and how this region has indeed advanced with a youth-centered intensive agenda, especially in the creative economy sectors.

You can listen to Day 3 panel discussions here.

Photos can be viewed here.