YOUTH CONCERNING SUSTAINABLE FUTURE

The idea of Youths Concerning A Sustainable Future came to the light in Kalmar in 1996. First it was set as an exchange project for youth from Kalmar Län, Sweden, Kaliningrad Region, Russia and Gdansk Voivodship, Poland. The project participants were young people active on the local level and interested in ecology, democracy, etc.

In the beginning, our project seemed to be just an occasion to meet people and get new nice experience, but just as the time passed, we saw the real meaning of the project. 'What can we do for other youths and for sustainable development and future? How to get power as youth and to make the decision-makers take our opinions under their consideration? '

In 1999 we got new members and organised two more meetings in Kalmar. We came to the common conclusion that we wanted to influence on young people in the Baltic area. A lot of young people in the Baltic Sea area are not aware of their possibilities to influence their societies.

That is why we decided to spread our network and organise more meetings and workshops that would make it possible to combine the broadening of our minds, sharing our knowledge, experiences and thoughts with other youths. The topics we want to deal especially with are Agenda 21 issues and decision making process. Our first step in achieving it was invitation that we gave to the young people from Butzow, Germany, whom we met during our meeting in Gdansk in February 2000.

During those two years of our activities we managed to develop a very close contact with the UBC, whose President supported us strongly from the very beginning. We also established the cooperation with the Commission on Environment. Our representatives took part in Riga in workshop about the youth issues. Already in 1999, there occurred an idea to create a network between youths around the Baltic connected with UBC. It seemed to be a perfect possibility to make decision-makers in our region listen to young people's opinions.

Now we are slowly starting - slowly as we are still waiting for the response from all the UBC cities - each one got the letter from the President, Mr Anders Engstrom but not many has answered.... So please check whether your city can help us to create the youth network....