Back to the crime-scene..Mollina,Spain 2007

Here I am again after a whole year in Mollina university for Youth and Development..an initiative that started many years agofrom the cooperation of the Spanish governemt, with the governments of Latin America to create a space for young people tocome closer and work and also to meet each other...Last year I have been working with colleagues from the Pool of Trainers of the Youth Forum, working on Global Education and creating tools for trainers on how to deal with this issue..This year I am working for the Spanish Youth Council, with young leaders trying to create a commmon understanding on Millenium Development Goals between young leaders from all over the world and also a sustainable network between them..

For those who do not know, Mollina is a small village 80 km. north of Malaga and has this CEULAT which is the center for the cooperation of the youth of Europe and Latin America. North-South centre of Council of Europe is the coordinator and organiser and every year a big team from them arrive to coordinate and organise the event. North-South centre has its headquarters in Lisbon/Portugal.

Mollina is one of the events that somebody can meet most of the stakeholders and actors of Youth WOrk in Europe together. Organisations like the Youth Forum and North-South centre, Asian-European Foundation and organisations such as Youth For Exchange and Understanding, AEGEE, Alliance of European VOlunteers Service Organisations,Youth Express Network (check my links on the left column) and many more, as well as National Youth Councils, participate actively there with their activities and have volunteers and participants usually all over the world ,creating a great colourful event,with a lot of expertise and experimental learning (apart from each organisations methods).

Really forward to be back here and work and offer my best to the team and steal some of the intercultural experience of allthe event..More than 14 members of the PoT will be involved here,so this means fun and nice talks in between..And the nights are already busy, going to Paco's, which is the only Pub in the village and it happens to be the mayor of the village also...lots of intercultural and informal learning between the participants, I would say it's one experience every youth worker has to live at least once in his/her Youth Work life..

Direct link for pics: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=27998&l=24dd9&id=626776829

Lisbon and Youth Event..

just came from Lisbon where I was preparing with 11 more colleagues from the YouthForum the Youth event of Portoguese Presidency..

each country who is taking over the presidency (Portugal took over from Germany and will hand over to Slovenia) is organising several common meetings of all the ministries and secretariats, in order to coordinate all the actions of the involved actors, to make sure that policies are common and evrybody is coordinating towards the same direction..

one of the things they have to organise is a youth event for the young people in order to hear the voice of young people and to be aware of what youth needs and demands...usually each country is deciding if they will nominate unorganised young people (pretty much the case of Northern countries) or people from the National Youth Councils (wherever those exist) in order to be more representative (elected by other young people) or just somebody who will have to go there (appointed by the ministry or a secretariat responsibly for youth..)

it can be one of the most fun things to do while being active in the Youth sector..

Portoguese presidency choosed the subject to be "Volunteerism" and the connection it has with other relavant issues such as Active Citizenship, Employment, Non-formal education recognition, etc.


while this being my 3rd european youth event(1st European Youth Week, Austrian Youth Event), I am looking so much forward to it beacuse it is quite fun to be with all these people from the 27 countries of Europe and discussing burning issues that have to do with Europe but the same time also with us..
i will keep you updated about the results but I can already tell u that the Commisioner for Educaiton and Sports will already be there and the Commisioner for Employment..so let's hope we will have a hot debate in all the subjects..

this event was to say a bit about Lisbon but I didn't manage cause political "Yannis" took over..so I'm enclosing you one of the pictures I managed to get and I hope to make so more next week...the city looked quite beautiful (the port area mostly) and very relaxed and it's a feeling I had missed the last few months serving my service to the greek army..

hope to keep u updated of all the news...
Yannis