Seminar

Global Seminar 2020: (Post)pandemic Political Education and Youth Work

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Dear friends and comrades,

We have the pleasure of inviting you to the forthcoming Global Seminar 2020.

Overview

The Global Seminar 2020 will gather together IUSY member organisationsfrom all over the world to meet and share the challenges young people and youth organisations have been facing since the beginning of the pandemic. 

Two-day Seminar will be a space for sharing our realities from different thematic perspectives. We will try to make this event as dynamic as possible with the elements of panel discussion, contribution of guest speakers and group work. 

Together we will imagine and map the recommendations for young people and youth organisations having youth work and political education in their agenda. 

As in 2019, this year we again cooperate and create our programme with the International Federation of Liberal Youth (ILFRY). This event will be a joint Global Seminar bringing both organisations and activists together. 

The aim of the Seminar will be to provide to the Member Organisations and to the SSU representatives a platformto discuss and come up with recommendation on how we can battle the shrinking spaces of democracy and imagine a post pandemic space for political education and youth work. 

A secondary aim is also to strengthen collaboration with IFLRY on topics that we agree on. The seminar will be an opportunity for us to learn and reflect upon new ideas and partnerships in our work for a fairer and more equal world. 

For any questions or remarks please don’t hesitate to contact the IUSY Secretariat at iusy@iusy.org.

With best regards,

Johanna Ortega                                           Ana Pirtskhalava

IUSY President                                            IUSY Secretary General 

Participation Profile & Selection Process

Each member organisation may register up to one participant for the meeting. 


The selection criteria will be based on
1. The questions listed in the application form

2. Gender Balance (both IUSY statutes and the global project require gender balance)

3. Regional Balance 

Participants must be able to attend the entire programme of the seminar.

It’s preferable that participants have an interest in workers rights, trade unions and decent working conditions. 

All participants must be aged 18-35 years old, with no exceptions. 

How to apply

Participants must apply by filling in the registration form that you can find here

 OR copy paste it to your browser: https://forms.gle/yEQcmWPrfgdnzVVa9

Deadline for registration is 1st of November 12:00pm CET.

Selected participants will receive the programme, the link to join the event and the technical information in advance.

Contact
iusy@iusy.org/ +4369913532960

Call for participants: Struggle for equality continues: mapping the road to gender equality in youth organisations (13-18 Oct, Berlin)

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Description of the activity
With this activity IUSY is planning to expand and strengthen the reach of gender mainstreaming policies, to provide space for young people and youth organisations to set up goals that go further than gender parity and develop tools that will allow their organisations and the youth sector to assure true gender equality. This strategy does not end by electing young women in leadership (while this in itself represents an important step forward) – the further challenge is the empowerment of all young people to assume even more active roles in working towards achieving a truly inclusive culture in our organisations and parties and reinforcing our efforts in combating exclusion, discrimination and violence.

IUSY will in this way return to focus on gender equality as one of the core requirements foran inclusive organisational culture and a fundamental basis for open and democratic youth organisations. This represents our next step in reaching beyond the policies and mechanisms for ensuring gender parity, to work on establishing an environment in which young people of all genders work together in a respectful and sensitive atmosphere, enabling each of them to give their best contribution to the shared goals and aspirations.

The participants in this activity will have the chance to give their contribution to this struggle. They will outline an advanced strategy for gender mainstreaming in youth organisations to bring about equal participation and visibility at all levels of the organisational structure, including leadership, representation and decision-making and unite young people and youth organisations in joint efforts for equality and against gender-based stereotypes, disrespect, harassment and violence. The participants will have the chance to explore the gender issues in their own organisations and our movement, getting an open view of the actual situation concerning gender equality and the impact of gender mainstreaming policies so far. They will investigate the understanding of the terms of gender identity and the extent to which gender diversity is respected in youth organisations. They will explore the reach of gender equality, while on the other side recognizing the challenges, including any type of gender-related discrimination and researching the mechanisms that the organisations are putting into action to face these threats and combat all types of inequality. Finally, they will set advanced goals for gender equality in youth organisations and design tools (guidelines and methods for concrete cases and situations) to carry them out – the IUSY toolkit for gender equality in youth organisations, which will be shared in our global movement and with our partner youth organisations, as well as a series of regional workshops to be realized by the IUSY Feminist Working Group in order to get additional input and approaches and rise the reach of the activity to global level in our movement.

Aim

The main aim of this activity is to design an advanced strategy for gender mainstreaming in youth organisations in order to assure equal representation and visibility of all actors and a joint struggle against all types of gender-based discrimination, including gender-based bias and stereotypes, disrespect and harassment and gender-based violence. The activity will contribute to reinforcing our ongoing struggle for inclusion and against discrimination and violence, starting from youth organisations active in our global movement and expanding further among the youth sector.

Objectives

• To strengthen the understanding of gender identity and recognize the importance of gender equality in youth organisations and our movement

• To comprehend the current situation in youth organisations regarding gender equality and the main challenges and issues to address in order to improve further

• To set short- and long-term goals for improvement of gender equality in youth organisations and design an advanced strategy to reach the defined goals

Participants profile

• 18-30 years old

• Grass root youth activists from IUSY partner/member organizations

• Interested in the topic of gender equality, feminism, youth activism, political participation, youth empowerment

• Interested in and strong motivation in being part of the follow up of the activity

Daily programme

How to apply

To make sure that everyone has equal chance in participating, participants must apply via online application form by clicking here or copy pasting the following link

https://forms.gle/FQFfvUqPqarH8has6

DEADLINE for registration is 8th of August, 2019.

DEADLINE for receiving application result is 12th of August, 2019.

Selection of the participation will be based on several criteria, such motivation for taking part in this activity, readiness to continue working towards expanding youth participation and their commitment and readiness to take part in the follow-up activities as well as age and gender.

Eligible member/partner organisations per country

According to the rules of the project, participants coming from Council of Europe member countries are eligible to apply.

Costs

There is a 30-euro participant contribution. All other costs such as travel, accommodation, meal will be fully covered by the project.

Travel information

Arrivals and Departures

Day of arrival for the activity is the 13th of October and day of departure is the 18th of October.

Please make your travel arrangements accordingly and do not forget that IUSY will not be able to cover accommodation or any other additional expenses for participants who need to stay additional nights. You should contact the project coordinator to confirm your flight ticket before purchasing it.

Travel reimbursement

As soon as your participation is confirmed, we strongly advise you to communicate with the project coordinator in order to organise your travel and buy your tickets as early as possible to avoid high costs. All travel reimbursements will be made in euro via bank transfer after the activity.

Cost of travels must be proven by original documents. Therefore, please do not forget to keep and hand in ALL of the following documents at the activity:

Flights:

1. Booking confirmation, itinerary and ticket (if the amount is not mentioned, you should provide an invoice or a bank statement)

2. Original boarding passes for all flight segments for both ways

3. Local travel tickets, where relevant

4. Your bank account details

Train/coach:

1. Booking confirmation, itinerary and ticket

2. Original, stamped tickets for all journey segments

3. Local travel tickets, where relevant

4. Your bank account details

Car:

1. Petrol receipts and a calculation of the kilometric allowance (itinerary showing the number of kilometers and kilometric rate used)

2. Origin address and route map

3. Your bank account details

Car sharing:

1. A statement signed by both by the driver and the traveler including the name of the traveler, the name of the driver, the dates of the journey, the itinerary and the number of kilometers and the amount paid.

2. Your bank account details

Visas

The IUSY Secretariat will support visa applications for the activity. If you require a visa for Germany, please send a copy of your passport to iusy@iusy.org as soon as possible, so the secretariat can draft a visa invitation letter for you. You need to make an appointment at the embassy/consulate and prepare required documents by yourself.

Accommodation and meeting venue

The accommodation and project venue will be sent to all participants nearer the time, at least one month in advance of the activity.

IUSY_EYF_invitation_october2019

Contact

Gohar Ghandilyan | IUSY Project Manager

Email: iusy@iusy.org or gohar.ghandilyan@iusy.org

Phone: +43 699 135 32 960

We are looking forward to receiving your application!

Statement of IUSY Feminist Working Group’19: Gender Mainstreaming in Youth Organisations

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Young activists of IUSY member organisations have met 27-30 June 2019, at Salvador Allende Haus in Germany to reflect on the theme Gender mainstreaming in youth organisations.

The IUSY Feminist Working Group has further discussed on women empowerment, intersectionality, representation and prevention of sexualized violence with a unique left perspective. We believe the fight against patriarchy must be the fight against all privileges and exploitations. Therefore, we have highlighted the difference from right and liberal feminism and have stressed for the need to:

  1. change the structure of society in order to achieve real equality. It’s not enough to cancel limitations;
  2. consider other struggles requiring attention and association with the needs in pursuing for gender equality;
  3. emphasise that the only feminism is intersectional feminism;
  4. analyse the reality through the lens of socialist intersectional feminism and to bring the left perspective to the centre of the table;
  5. have internal tools and common understanding of topics related to feminism in order to implement gender equality in the MO’s & in IUSY;

The Feminist Working Group has resolved to develop and publish a toolkit in December in order to inform, form and transform the knowledge.

No feminism without socialism, no socialism without feminism

Salvador Allende Haus, Germany, 29thJune 2019

 

 

Call for Registrations: Global Seminar 2019 3-6 October 2019

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Overview

What:             IUSY Global Seminar

When:            3-6 October 2019

Where:           Stockholm, Sweden

 

Overview of the event

The Olof Palme International Centre’s Global Project finances the IUSY Global Seminar. The IUSY Global Seminar 2019 will gather together IUSY member organisations and representatives from the districts of the Swedish Social Democratic Youth League (SSU). New to this year is that the second day will be spent having a joint programme together with IFLRY, The International Federation of Liberal Youth. The aim of the seminar will be to provide to the Member Organisations and to the SSU representatives a platform to discuss and come up with ideas on how we can battle shrinking civil society space and support civil society organisations and activists across the globe. A secondary aim is also to strengthen collaboration with IFLRY on topics that we agree on. The seminar will be an opportunity for us to learn and reflect upon new ideas and partnerships in our work for a fairer and more equal world.

Theme

A cornerstone of a democratic society is an empowered and independent civil society. Civil society organiations (CSOs) are the voice of the people and ensure that decision-makers make policies that respond to the needs of its citizens. In the last couple of years civil society has been under attack. CIVICUS has documented that civil society space is attacked in 111 countries and that only four per cent of the world’s population live in countries where our fundamental civil society freedoms such as freedom of association, peaceful assembly and expression are respected. The shrinking space has presented itself as restrictive legislation, restricted access to funding for CSOs, and attacks such as threats, violence and murders have been committed to human rights defenders and civil society representatives and organisations. The Global Seminar will tackle the topic of shrinking civil society space and the role of political youth organisations. Together we will learn more about the attacks on civil society but also discuss what our roles are as political youth organisations in a more democratic world by ensuring that we have a free and independent civil society.

For more information about the state of civil society during 2018 read CIVICUS 2019 report.

For any questions or remarks please don’t hesitate to contact the IUSY Secretariat at iusy@iusy.org, put Global Seminar 2019 in the subject line.

With best regards,

Johanna Ortega                                                Ana Pirtskhalava

IUSY President                                            IUSY Secretary General

Participation Profile & Selection Process

Each member organisation may register up to one participant for the meeting.
The selection criteria will be based on
1. The questions listed in the application form

  1. Gender Balance (both IUSY statutes and the global project require gender balance)
  2. Regional Balance

Participants must be able to attend the entire programme of the seminar.

It’s preferable that participants have an interest in working with civil society and has knowledge about the threats against civil society today as well as previous experience working with liberal youth.

All participants must be aged 18-35 years old, with no exceptions.

How to apply

Participants must apply by filling in the registration form that you can find here. Or copy paste it to your browser: https://forms.gle/tLWevqnbTkXqbsA26

Please note that a thought out answer to the questions are required as it is part of the selection process.

The deadline for application is 05 of August.

Participation fee

The participation fee for the event is 50€ per person and must be paid with bank transfer by Wednesday 15th September 2019.

Please note that you will have to be selected before you pay the participation fee.
The participation fee will cover accommodation, meals, refreshments and programme for the duration of the event. Any additional nights’ accommodation must be arranged and paid for by participants.

Payment should be via bank transfer to IUSYs account.

Once you have made the bank transfer, please send a payment receipt to iusy@iusy.org. Please be aware that IUSY cannot take responsibility for any bank fees.

Visas

The IUSY Secretariat will support visa applications for the event. Please note that the Secretariat will support you with a visa invitation letter. Participants themselves must apply for the visa and book appointments with the embassies/consulates.

Travel Reimbursement

Travel reimbursement is available up to a fixed reference price. Only economy tickets will be reimbursed. Please note that as this event is open to all IUSY’s regions the amount of Travel Reimbursement available to the different organisations will become available after the selection process has finished.

Cancellations

Each organisation whose participant withdraws after the 25th of September without a valid reason will be charged the participation fee.

Contacts

Amanda Lilliefeldt

Amanda.lilliefeldt@iusy.org or

iusy@iusy.org / +4369913532970

IUSY is ready to do its active part to facilitate the work of ngos and youth for the inclusion of refugees

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Study session for an inclusive society for Refugees - Budapest - at the European Youth Center - 23/27 April 2018

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

Report from the II Latin-American annual conference (Bogotá – Colombia)

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Latin American annual conference of the Global Progressive forum - Empowering youth

Between Thursday the 22nd and Saturday the 24th of March the II Latin-American Annual Conference of the Global Progressive Forum was held in the city of Bogotá, hosted by the Liberal Party of Colombia, with the support of Party of European Socialists and Foundation for European Progressive Studies. The event was coordinated by Maria Cristina Cifuentes, IUSY former Vice-President, and Rodrigo Muñoz Baeza, IUSY Vice-President, took an active part in it.

During the conference, various debates and conversations were held on different topics: the peace agreements in Colombia, the European Union – Latin America and the Caribbean trade agreements, the situation of human right s in Latin America, the struggle for land in the continent, the gender perspective in the globalization, the LGTBI agenda in globalization and the empowerment of youth in access to politics.

IUSY participated within the framework of the panel on the struggle for land in Latin America (moderated by Rodrigo) and in the panel on the empowerment of youth in access to politics (moderated by Maria Cristina and with the participation of Rodrigo as one of the panellists).

We highlighted the work that has been done in IUSY regarding the political training of young people from various Countries around the world. We stressed the importance for Political Parties of working in cooperation with youth to make influential decisions for the development of our Countries. Young people can provide valuable knowledge and new action strategies to generate social transformations and common welfare.

International training activities such as those offered by IUSY (Seminars, Study visits, Political festivals, Regional committees meetings, Thematic workshops, among others) are efficient instruments to develop youth involvement at the local and national levels. If we participate we can understand the good practices that are developed in other Countries and we can put them in practice in ours.

The leaders of the political parties must value the knowledge acquired by the young people in the participation in international activities, and they must provide spaces for the presentation of innovative ideas which promote the creation of new policies and effective action strategies.

In this event three experiences were presented:

  • personal experience in the PS Chile,
  • political participation in general in Latin America (especially the alarming low participation in elections, the decrease confidence in democracy as a political system versus dictatorships, and the class bias in political participation)
  • and the empowerment of Youth in Mother parties (sure that through organization, contestation and attitude political spaces will open, taking as an example Jusos, the youth organisation of the Social-democratic party of Germany, and its strong position against the formation of a new government of great-coalition in their Country).

We also had a private meeting to discuss the political situation in Venezuela, in which the representatives of the parties Acción Democrática and Voluntad Popular, as well as the former Attorney general Luisa Ortega, were invited to report the institutional, humanitarian and economic crisis that the Country is experiencing.

In this occasion, and representing IUSY, pointing out the political positions of the Organisation through the statements of the IUSY American Committee (“We reiterate our concern about the political, economic and social crisis that deepens in Venezuela”) and of the IUSY Presidium, citing that “IUSY 1) calls for plural dialogue, and 2) we urge the main political actors of both the government and the opposition to the cessation of political violence. We also hope that 3) the institutions are respected and 4) that they bet on the recognition of all the Venezuelan people” and that “IUSY 1) requests the right to peaceful protest to be guaranteed and that 2) who has been deprived of liberty during the demonstrations can be judged by natural judges, and that they are guaranteed due processes and, finally, 3) the posts are released“, signing the study visit that was made in 2015 to Caracas.

Finally, we announced the intention to be present in Venezuela during the upcoming Presidential elections as observers.

Conclusions

  • The European Union has been working with effort in order to contribute to the important peace process in Colombia, providing significant support and accompaniment in the implementation of the agreements.
  • Relations between Europe and Latin America have been maximized to support solutions to different situations, as the case of Venezuela. There is a call for international cooperation to support the opposition in Venezuela.
  • We must continue to create effective action strategies that provide guarantees of rights for LGTBQI* people, women’s rights, gender equality, and the rights of indigenous communities.
  • We understand that in Latin America there are problems that require urgent solutions, and international cooperation provides solutions and advances, building justice, peace, freedom and equality.
  • IUSY should continue working with the Global Progressive Forum in the development of training projects to contribute with effective action strategies to solve the problems of the region.

Rodrigo Muñoz Baeza
IUSY Vice-President

Maria Cristina Cifuentes
Former IUSY Vice-President

Promoting active citizenship and participation: a toolkit

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Download the toolkit in PDF

This toolkit is a collection of the methods, activities and project ideas of the international activity “Young people in action: promoting active citizenship and democracy” organized by the International Union of Socialist Youth (IUSY) with the support of Young European Socialists (YES).

The activity took place in June 2017 in Berlin and was hosted by SJD – Die Falken with the financial support of the European Youth Foundation (EYF). The activity gathered together 24 participants from 16 countries who worked together on the themes of democracy, active citizenship and youth participation.

After the activity, the team gathered the implemented methods as well as the ideas produced during the activity in this toolkit in order to share them with young people and youth organizations who work actively in the eld.

The toolkit presents selected methods implemented during the activity as well as ideas that have been created and developed by the participants. It also includes a short overview of non-formal education, active citizenship and youth participation. In this way, the toolkit introduces the main concepts of the activity and offers methods that can support exploring them while working with a group of young people. In the toolkit, you will also find the daily flow of the activity and several useful resources that will support you exploring the theme more in-depth.

Team and participants hope the reader enjoys the tool-kit and finds content applicable to her*him context.

Active Citizenship

is a term used to describe the involvement of individuals in public life which can take place at local, regional, national and international levels. Youth organisations should support young people, for them to explore and understand the concept of active citizenship and develop skills and competences in order to address and analyse issues concerning the theme as well as be empowered to come up with solutions.

Youth participation

is a process of achieving positive changes in young people’s lives and of building a better community and society. Means to achieve it are different: initiatives, activities, projects that promote youth involvement at very different levels–local, regional, national and international. There are diverse theories dealing with youth participation and it can be approached from different perspectives depending on the context, background etc. It is important to keep in mind the motivation of different actors such as civil society, political organizations, youth organizations might vary as well.

The team

Gohar Ghandilyan
(Armenia/Austria)

Anuschka Ruge
(Germany/Belgium)

James Sleep
(New Zealand/France)

Ana Pirtskhalava
(Georgia)

Matteo Cervi
(Italy/Austria)

Free and Quality Education as a Human Right (Students Working group meeting 2018)

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Students working group 2018

What: Students Working group meeting 2018
When: from the 17th to the 20th May
Where: Kurt Löwenstein Youth Centre Werneuchen / Werftpfuhl, Germany. (Close to Berlin)
Participants profile: 18-35 years, grassroots activists, 2 seats for each region (no more than one per Member Organisation)
Deadline: 2 April

In this working group meeting, we will explore the today status of the access to education from a rights-based approach and will come up with campaigns to strengthen IUSY work on students issues.

Student politics remain critical in youth struggles for an equal world. IUSY as a youth organisation cannot afford to be complacent about student politics and struggles. It is therefore of supreme importance that the newly elected IUSY leadership takes the students issues seriously.

IUSY believes that student’s rights are fundamental for the youth of the world to become active and critical citizens in our society.

For the youth to realize its full potential and contribute positively towards development access to public education at all levels must be a reality.

Therefore we aim to build a network that will support the interest of students within IUSY structures and at a global level.

You can find here the complete Invitation and thecnical details

Participants profile:

We will select up to 2 participants from each Region. Each member organisation may register up to one participant for the meeting. Please note that the event must be gender-balanced and therefore the selection criteria will follow this premise in order to ensure such balance.

Participants must be able to attend the entire programme of the seminar and be active throughout the year after the meeting. This is due to that the work of the Working Group will be carried out throughout the year in line with the working plan.

It’s preferable that participants have experience in Students issues and are interested in human rights.

All participants must be aged 18-35 years old, with no exceptions.

Registrations:

Participants must apply by filling the online registration form at https://goo.gl/forms/kj3olrluKIquqnrr2 by Monday 2 April 2018.
All applicants will receive the outcome of their application by the 6th of April.

Contact:

Amanda Lilliefeldt
IUSY Project Manager
iusy@iusy.org
+4369913532970