First Face to Face Meeting of the project Up2You(th) was hosted in Kumanovo by Center for Intercultural Dialogue on May 26th-27th.

Firstly, let’s talk about the project.

Up2You(th) is a Strategic Partnership Project that gets together 3 partners.
Armenian Progressive Youth (APY) from Armenia, Youthfully Yours (YYSK) Slovakia, and us, Center for Intercultural Dialogue, from North Macedonia.

The Strategic Partnership pursues the following goals:

  1. Building capacities of 15 youth workers, project managers and educators to effectively outreach and engage individual youngsters and groups of young people not active on local level in partner countries;
  2. Jointly exploring new forms of youth engagement and active citizenship, including digital participation;
  3. Equipping youth workers and youth organizations with capacity, tools and methods to deliver high quality workshops on youth participation and active citizenship;
  4. Identifying main obstacles for youth participation through a Survey on “Youth participation in community life” among young people;
  5. Exchanging methods, training materials and best practices on youth participation and civic engagement between partners;
  6. Supporting youth workers and trainers to incorporate values and methodologies of youth participation and active citizenship in the work of their organizations.

In the meeting, 3 of our members were present in the meeting, with Besart as the coordinator of the project, and Natalija and Jovana as members of CID.

The meeting took place in MultiКулти and the first day started with coffee and croissants as a welcome from our side.

“In the agenda, we had to talk about the current state of the project, and how to move forward. We started with our feelings and what we were expected during the meeting in Kumanovo, and I believe, it’s safe to say that we exceeded those expectations.” – told Besart. “Ivan from YYSK introduced to us the survey reports, and what are the next steps to it. They made clear step by step instructions on how to prepare this report and when to submit it.” – said Besart.

“I am looking forward towards the Focus Groups” – said Natalija. “As a Youthworker, I believe this will give me a chance to get to know the youngsters and get to understand their point of view with which we have to prepare our Workshops for this summer” – continued Natalija. “I really loved their ideas and I am happy to be a part of this project”.

The next day, dissemination was in the agenda, and also the budget doubts questions were answered and cleared out.

The next partners meeting from Up2You(th) is scheduled to be in Armenia around October.