The European Youth Forum (YFJ) is a unique organisation that brings together a very diverse membership bound by one main underlining cause: the belief in making Europe a better place for its young people, not only tomorrow, but especially here and now. What this better place should look like, and how it should be achieved, is a complex issue with many possible interpretations. It is crucial, then, that the Youth Forum serves as an important platform where our member organisations can meet, exchange ideas and good practices, find ways of cooperating with each other and take joint decisions in an open and transparent democratic process. The next step is to do advocacy work at all levels by working together to achieve our aims.
This might seem self-evident and redundant to mention but I believe it is important to remind ourselves of what the Forum is, in which context and which manner it works and to think out loud and openly whether everything works the way we want it to or whether there are things that can be improved. In order to be a truly inclusive platform we need to assess our external as well as internal ways of functioning. That is why in the past two years I spent a lot of energy on improving these aspects of the Platform and believe that we made progress in this respect. However, I am convinced that we can always do better and more. Some of these points I address in the blog section entitled "Work done so far...".
What are the main focus points that the YFJ can, is and/or should be an expert in? How can it provide added value to its member organisations as well as its partners and ultimately benefit all young people? Does our platform work in a sufficiently inclusive manner or is there room for improvement? How can we make the diversity of beliefs and opinions, diversity of organisational cultures, diversity of backgrounds and resources that exist within our platform into a strength rather than a weakness?
These are important questions that cannot be answered by one person or one organisation only. I would like to share some basic ideas of my own that might offer possible answers and solutions. I will do this in the form of shorter blog posts focused on the main areas linked to our recently adopted Strategic Priorities of the Forum and the draft Work-Plan for 2013-14: youth participation, strong youth organisations, autonomy and inclusion, empowering of member organisations, rights-based approach to youth policy and some more operational topics linked to an inclusive platform. With this I am going to offer you just some food for thought as I believe it is very important to engage in a continuous dialogue on answering these questions jointly.
