Joshua Jagdhuhn and Nina Klabunde, board members of the Youth Advisory Board, had the honor of participating in this campaign as part of the "Youth Action Week" in Strasbourg. Together with young people from all member states of the Council of Europe, we discussed important topics such as human rights, youth participation, and digitalization. At the end of the week, coinciding with the 50th anniversary of the youth sector, the Council of Europe received 50 action proposals on all three topics, all aimed at revitalizing democracy and the associated participation of young people.
“Democracy Here! Democracy Now!” – This is a youth campaign by the Council of Europe to revive democracy and strengthen mutual trust between young people and democratic institutions and processes.
We attended a workshop on the topic of "Digitalization." We discussed the issue of how well-informed society is about digital media and its possibilities, and that there is still much room for improvement in this area, especially in Germany. We also talked about equal opportunities and which social groups have access to digitalization and which do not.
In addition to the work in the workshops, the Council of Europe offered a diverse program. This included everything from cultural music evenings with stage performances, artistic activities such as poetry slams, graffiti spraying, stamping and creative writing, to pleasant get-togethers in the Youth Center and listening to Eurovision songs, culminating in a large farewell dinner and closing party.
We gained so much from this week: Exchanging ideas with members of other youth organizations inspired us to see how young people in other countries structure their organizations and how we can incorporate that into our work at wannseeFORUM. The digitalization workshop provided us with many project ideas for the youth advisory board, which we hope to implement in the future.
Aside from the many new ideas we gained regarding our understanding of democracy and youth participation, we are primarily taking the interpersonal aspects back with us into our everyday lives in Berlin. We met a wide variety of people from all over Europe who gave us new perspectives on life and enabled us to think beyond the bubble we had been living in every day.
If the whole world communicated and cooperated the way we young people did during "Youth Action Week", then we would be well on our way to world peace.
It was a week we will never forget and a great start to the democratic work for the youth advisory board.
We would like to sincerely thank the other members of the German delegation for the great cooperation, the IJAB for the superb organization within the delegation, and of course the Council of Europe for this incredible experience!