This first meeting of the 2020 network was held in the particular context of the Covid-19 pandemic in Europe and worldwide. The various measures taken by our governments and the current health situation do not allow any Europeans and partners to move from one country to another. We wanted to launch this first meeting despite the context. It seemed important, even necessary, to hold this network meeting in order first to maintain this network, then to innovate and modernize our working methods, and finally to initiate new perspectives for the future of our joint activities from the local to the international level.
This meeting was held by videoconference on Skype, according to the identified needs of the partners, to carry out studies in the European context and to propose future prospects, to give a prospective orientation to the work of the network. It brought together 9 European partners: Portugal (Factor Social), Belgium (FAMIDO), Estonia (NEA), Poland (Stowarzyszenie Poczucia), Germany (Mostar Friedensprojekt), Turkey (Pi Youth and Anatolia), and France (AMSED).
The network was created in 2009 and aimed at integrating young people with fewer opportunities, with today the closure of its three-year action plan, the main actions were ratified on the agenda, in particular concerning the definition of criteria for the implementation of European seminars and a strategy for disseminating the results to exploit them from the local to the European level by extending the impact to other young people and actors beyond the network. The activities for which the AMSED network is responsible are highly innovative and it is its task to promote research in these fields; it fulfils this mission thanks in particular to the compendia of each partner’s good practice and innovative tools in their actions which support the dissemination of results and better project endorsements. The activities for which AMSED is responsible involve many youth actors and it must, for their accomplishment, work in partnership with these partner actors. Relationships with stakeholders in the various fields of youth work are constant.
On the agenda of this meeting of the network
- Presentation of the partners, the program and 2020 objectives of the network: general objectives, specifics objectives, outcomes, network strategy plan, tangible and intangible results, impacts, dissemination tools.
- Exchanges of experiences during the Quarantine – Covid-19: good practices, actions, project, tools, recommendations, e-learning…
- Future project to implement from the partners
- Presentation of the European Youth Together call for 2020
- AMSED projects presentation: Urban Agriculture Seminar and Zero Waste Seminar
- Covid-19 Recommendation
- Review of the Network Meeting
Thus, on the ground, and since the emergence of the epidemic, the network’s associations, young people and European civil society have been at work relaying, applying and enforcing the States’ decisions, informing and reassuring the population, ensuring the implementation of a continuity plan for public action, coordinating a chain of solidarity that has been set up in each of the European countries, in particular to help vulnerable and disadvantaged people, supporting health professionals in their struggle to save lives, social workers and young people in their context to cope.
In all the NGOs of the network of initiatives are born. Volunteers, members, volunteers, young people, refugees, migrants, employees, citizens, all good wills come together and show creativity, solidarity and inventiveness. In order to identify and share good practices, AMSED has launched a section that aims to bring together exemplary initiatives set up by local, national and European NGOs and associations.