You(th) decide - participant Noemi's opinion / EN
You(th) decide - final conference - participant Noemi's opinion / SK
"Time flies according to who we are with," wrote William Shakespeare. So, while spending a weekend cooped up in a dormitory watching TV series is a common student affair, if this student had joined us on September 12th in the small Polish town of Ryglice, they would have managed to write a whole series in those 24 hours. After all, we managed something similar.
But before I tell you what program awaited us there (24 young people from four different countries), let's take a short trip back in time. We just need to look back a few months, and you'll immediately understand why we met in Ryglice at all.
The driving force behind the entire V4 project was the need to improve youth participation in local communities in the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, and Slovakia. Thanks to this shared vision, we decided to organize four series of three meetings, where young people met with various youth workers and their representatives at the self-government level. The goal was to create a platform that would provide space for new ideas to emerge and then be processed and developed into concepts that could be successfully implemented in the near future.
Naturally, however, we realized that ending the project at this stage would not be enough. Although each country managed to collect a lot of capable and imaginative results, we were on our own – until this moment, we had not yet cooperated with our foreign "buddies" in any way.
Fortunately, that meeting in Poland changed things. If you asked any of us, we would admit that it was a truly intense day. From initial ice-breaking games to group workshops, during which we delved deeper into the topic of youth participation and came up with several interesting definitions of what this term means to us. At the end of the day, we began to prepare for the "main course" of the meeting – the You(th) Decide conference, which took place in the cultural center in the Ryglice region.
Suddenly, our moment of glory arrived: a brief introduction to us and our organizations, a presentation of results, and a discussion focused on key questions regarding youth involvement in public and political life. An important factor was that the audience consisted not only of pupils and students but also mayors of surrounding villages. Seeing important figures, who were primarily "adults," subconsciously assured us that the voice of young people was not only welcome but also encouraged. We finally understood that the catchy project name You(th) Decide did not only refer to our own determination. It was also an invitation for local authorities who have the opportunity to lend us a helping hand and become our partners, rather than rivals.
For now, we can only guess what fruits this experience will bring us. However, I dare say that the meeting in Ryglice was not just the "icing on the cake." It was more like a cup of sugar, without which our cake would be edible, but quite tasteless. And probably, we wouldn't even be able to call it a cake.
The You(th) decide! education thus supported the creation of a community which, we believe, will continue to work regularly on the set goals contributing to the improvement of the quality of life of young people in the Košice region.
You(th) decide is financially supported by the Visegrad Fund, and the activities are sponsored by the Chairman of the Košice Self-Governing Region and the Mayor of Ryglice (Poland).
Activities are being developed in parallel in 4 Visegrad Four countries in cooperation with partners: