I’m back in London, via Vienna, after an amazing time in Kosice, Slovakia. It was a very inspiring and interesting three days.
Great to hear about the challenges, successes and stories of people in other countries who are broadly trying to do the same things as us in the UK. Great to meet so many motivated, passionate young people. Great to visit Slovakia for the first time – it is a beautiful country!
After the first day of the meeting, with a visit to the school (See pic) , the rest of the trip focused on evaluating the ‘It’s your choice, use your voice’ project.
It was down to business in the amazing venue in Kyask – a beautiful old Soviet recreation centre for young people, set in the hills outside Kosice. A perfect place to work and think! The project had linked and compared school councils and youth democracy across Slovakia and Italy. It included training, conferences, seminars, youth exchanges, and supporting school councils to link with each other, and with regional councils.
A number of common obstacles were identified:
- problems with elections
- lack of youth motivation
- lack of joined up thinking from local government
- adults who are too willing to lead instead of facilitate
It was useful to provide my point of view on these obstacles as we went along, making clear how familiar they are to us, and discussing how best to overcome them.
Their main idea is to present the evaluation of the project in a way that will convince other young people to get involved. To pass on their learning to others, to help motivate young people – to make them ‘involvers’ I guess. Together, everyone put together a clear plan on the publication to convince other young people, which I’m sure will be a success – using some very eye-catching design. It will be translated into English, Slovakian and Italian, so I hope we can put it up on the involver site when it is done.
There were also lots of ideas for further cooperation that we hope to get involved with. I gave information on what Asher and I are up to with involver, and signposted resources and ideas which could help everyone in the future.
I think I’ll be going back in November – hopefully with Asher this time – to do some training, which is very exciting. The Kosice region is setting up their first regional school council.
Democratic youth voice on this scale has never happened before, so it’s amazing to be involved. There is also a possibility of some training in Turin to help with their regional school council in February next year – we would love to be involved in this too.
Both opportunities are very exciting – especially because it would give
me the chance to catch up with my new friends. Sooooo cheesy (sorry).
So thank you Michal and Erika for inviting me to take part, and thank you to all the young people who took part (especially for the Slovakian ‘mineral water’/ and the (many) Italian songs from Napoli). A great experience.
Over the course of the three days, I took short videos of some of the young people present asking them why student voice and school councils are important to them. I’ll put up a new one every day for the next week or so. Thank you to those who took part in this – your English is great! Here is Veronica from Slovakia telling us about her role in her school in Kosice: