Networks help improve prospects for young people

MS, THE DANISH ASSOCIATION for International Co-operation, works together with the South East European Youth Network (SEEYN) that comprises 17 youth organizations from ex-Yugoslavia, Albania, and Bulgaria.

Today, youth unemployment is one of the biggest obstacles to peace and development in the Balkan region. SEEYN works with an aim to strengthen youth participation and visibility in civil society, improve youth policies, and on the whole give young people better possibilities for economic, social, and personal development.

Through exchange programs and work camps, young people gain experiences and skills, prejudices are done away with, and networks are built across borders.

In 2004, SEEYN ran 12 work camps with different themes, and had seven cross-regional exchanges of longer duration.

Guide on youth rights

SEEYN is in the process of writing a guide on young people’s legal rights and obligations titled ’U pravu si!’, which means ’You are right!’. The purpose is to generate a group of critical and well-informed young people who can invoke and exert their rights at grass-root level.

By increasing young people’s knowledge of the legal system, public institutions become more concrete and accessible; furthermore, young people who are aware of their rights will be able to pressure the state into according them those rights.

The guide will be handed out to more than 500,000 young people in high school, and it is expected that some 2,5 million people will come to know about the project through a media campaign, and through the work of several hundred youth leaders and volunteers.

Law on voluntary work is lacking

SEEYN also works on the following projects: the ’Albert Einstein Project’ and the ’EU is not a member of your party’ project.

The aim of the ’Albert Einstein Project’ is to create legislation on volunteer and regional commitment work, in order to enable civil society organizations to make use of more volunteers for both projects and advocacy work in the local communities.

In many places, volunteer work is considered moonlighting, which is a problem with regards to the development of civil society and local democracy. The project comprises 70 activities and events in 7 countries in the region, a film on volunteer work, and more than 50 local and national organizations and governmental institutions.

’The EU is not a member of your party’ is a project that focuses on the need for the western part of the Balkans to be integrated with Europe. The project stresses that integration is not the responsibility of the political parties only. The parties cannot realize the necessary changes without the backing of the local communities.

Furthermore, SEEYN conducted a series of information campaigns on the environment in 2004.

Milka Mimic, receiver of the MS Award 2005: "This award is a motivation for us to run a sustainable program and network." Photo: Jan Kjær.

Received MS Award 2005

Milka Mimic from the youth network SEEYN in the Balkans received the 2005 MS Award of 15,000 Danish kroner. At the General Assembly in April 2005, she finished her touching speech of thanks with the following words:

”This award is a motivation for us to run a sustainable program and network. MS will always be our partner and if someone were to ask us whether we could do all this on our own, we would say – no, because MS did not provide us only with organizational knowledge, but has – from the very beginning – provided us with dedicated and motivated activists and workers that organized with us our first leader training seminar, our first voluntary work camp, helped establish the office in Sarajevo, helped set the agenda for our first general assembly and promoted us in all other parts of Europe as a strong and trustful partner! And here we say “Thank you MS!”