The International Union of Socialist Youth is ready to welcome 22 participants from 18 countries to the European Youth Centre of the Council of Europe in Budapest for a 5-day Study session to empower youth in the hard work to create more open and fairer societies for refugees, from the 23rd to the 27th of April, 2018.

The Study session, organised by IUSY in cooperation with the Council of Europe, aims to facilitate the participants in exploring the roots of discrimination, empower them in their efforts to work with and for young refugees to help with the development of their full personality and their social inclusion.

Participants will explore the concepts of identity, discrimination, with a particular focus on refugees and Internally Displaced People.

Participants will be asked to share both their best and worst experiences from their home countries, in an effort to come up with an online platform that aims to help youth organisations to get in touch with NGOs and vice-versa. The aim of the platform is to improve the coordination in organising events at the local and national levels with the hopes to sensitise and engage their local communities in the active inclusion of refugees.

ZITA GURMAI – newly elected member of the Hungarian parliament and PES women President will open the Study Session on Monday – the 23rd of April, at 9:30 am.

Participants will be helped in their work by high-level speakers who will participate in a special Panel debate on Wednesday the 25th of April, at 11 am, focusing on the role of the different stakeholders in the field:

• Marja Bijl – Vice-president of PES women (Party of European Socialists’ women network). Ms. Bijil is a managing director of an NGO working to combat human trafficking (a situation many refugees, both women and men face when they arrive in Europe). She is well known in her home country (The Netherlands) for the organisation of local-network to combat human trafficking;
• Michaela Pobudova – Director of Mareena. Ms. Pobudova has a long history of working with refugees and migrants and is currently the director of Mareena. Mareena is a Slovakian NGO working for inclusion of newly arrived refugees and migrants through courses and workshops that facilitates the promotion of the full personality of people, helping them to not be “just refugees”;
• Neil Arun – Journalist and Editorial consultant. Mr. Arun has been shortlisted twice for the European Press Prize. He has worked with local journalists in the Balkans and Iraq, specialising in investigative journalism. Mr. Arun has also been a mentor in the Refugee Journalism Project. Neil Arun has his work published on The Guardian, the New Statesman, The Atlantic, and The Independent among others.

The speakers will give participants an insight into the relationships between politics, civil society and journalism when it comes to working with and portraying the so-called “Refugee crisis”.

Contacts:
Amanda Lilliefeldt | IUSY Project Manager – amanda.lilliefeldt@iusy.org
Matteo Cervi | IUSY External consultant on communication – matteo.cervi@iusy.org