“SHAPING THE FUTURE - YOUTH CONFERENCE” IN THE ERASMUS+ PROJECT

Since the first shootings in eastern Ukraine and the launch of an anti-terrorist operation, our country has faced evacuated universities, enterprises and organizations from the Donetsk and Luhansk regions to other areas, as well as the problems of social adaptation of internally displaced persons, among whom the youth has occurred to be the most vulnerable part.

Therefore, discussions with regard to the social adaptation of young migrants were perceived with particular concern and sometimes personal pain by the participants of the international youth conference "Shaping the Future", which took place on December 4-7, 2020 in Dnipro and was a part of the two-year FUTURE “Shaping thediverse common FUTURE – Wide dialogue to create and methodologically support a network for involvingmigrant youth into civic society” under the EU ERASMUS + programme.

Approximately 40 activists of Ukrainian youth NGOs and displaced universities from Dnipro, Zaporizhzhia, Kharkiv, Kyiv and Vinnytsia, representatives of the Dnipro Youth Council, representatives of the youth and sports department of the City Council and students who are internally displaced discussed problems and instruments to address them and reach better adaptation of internally displaced persons and young migrants in the most emotional way. Debates and roundtables have shown that the conference has won and had a significant impact by bringing together participants in a variety of their functions in society. And it was this that made it possible to consider the issue of involving migrant youth in civic activism and preventing its radicalization from different perspectives: university formal education, informal experience of participation in public organizations, support with paperwork, inclusion of young migrants in local youth councils and etc.

During the hours of discussions and presentations of their own scientific and practical work results, the participants of the conference developed into partners of the newly created Ukrainian network for involvement of young migrants in civil society. The 1^st conference day resulted in the development and approval of the Conference Resolution – a document stating clear steps needed to be taken by each person or organization interested in helping the refugees. For example, an important concept of the resolution was the proposal of the participants to develop a program of training young volunteers to work with youth who experience socio-civic activity constraints through forced migration on the platform of the “NGO-University-Government” interaction triangle.

If day 1 of the conference was national in terms of participants and the content of the issues discussed, then day 2 expanded its horizons to an international level, as activists of the training course "Shaping the Future - Youth Workers’ Lab" from Poland, Georgia, Lithuania Italy and Ukraine joined it. These youngsters have shared their experiences and studied the best practices of social adaptation of young migrants in these countries in parallel since November, 30 in the Dnipro University of Technology. The training-course participants made their presentations on painful topics and various aspects of young migrants' lives as well as offered projects to help them fully engage in active life in new conditions in their countries.

The presence of young migrants, who could evaluate, criticize or support activists' initiatives in the "here and now" mode, was particularly keen for discussions around the presentations.

All interested persons will have the opportunity to familiarize themselves with the conference materials, which will be published following the conference and distributed through the international partner network of the project.

The project belongs to the K2 category - Capacity Building in the Field of Youth and aims to bring together experienced higher education professionals (teachers and managers of higher education institutions) and representatives of youth NGOs to strengthen everyone's potential by sharing best practices in involving and adapting young migrants into and for the civil society through formal education and civic engagement beyond the learning hours.

The project will continue until the end of 2020 and we have many more interesting activities ahead!

Conference Proceeding

The cinference proceeding will be posted on the project website