what i am doing in Varna, Bulgaria?

together with Zara, armenian collegue, we are facilitating European Youth Forum meeting, which is being held in this nice country, which 2 days ago was invited to join EU from 2007 Jan 1. It also gives as a lot more visibility than normal youth meeting - since we are "European" and we are in Bulgaria..

some information about the meeting is given below:

September 26, 2006

In the period 27.09 – 01.10 European Youth Forum in cooperation with Youth Society for Peace and Development of the Balkans, with the support of the State Agency for Youth and Sports and Varna Municipality organize an Open Space Training Event: Improving National Youth Work – exchange of concrete knowledge and practice.

What is the European Youth Forum: www.youthforum.org

In the past years, the European Youth Forum (YFJ) has organized several activities with the broad focus on sustainability of youth work and national youth policy in Europe. These have been followed by concrete regional support activities, and a series of follow-up actions.

Further to the activity on the Role of Youth Organizations in National Youth Policy Development, organized in Moscow in December 2005, YFJ is organizing a seminar to follow up on the discussions initiated, and bridge development of youth work with national youth policy development. The continuous monitoring of youth work development has shown the need for concrete thematic training activities for member organizations active at national level. These have also shown in evaluations and surveys conducted on the topic. Therefore, YFJ is organizing an open space event with strong training element on national youth work and policy development.

Open Space Training Event

This activity will gather representatives of YFJ MOs active at the national level, and working to strengthen the capacity of youth organizations in determining the national youth policy agenda.

The overall aim of the meeting is to bring together practitioners and decision-makers of member organizations willing to share and learn good practices in capacity building and influencing national youth policy agenda. The event will therefore focus around three main themes:

1. Working with member organizations;
2. Advocacy and lobby work;
3. Monitoring youth policy implementation.

(the picture: Zara and me are preparing balloons for Treasure Hunt)