The Future of Civil Societies

In June 2022, the programmes YOUNG PEOPLE remember and MEET UP! Youth for Partnership organized a joint event with an online series of workshops and insightful fireside chats. The participants learned a lot about local history youth work, media literacy, and digital memory formats in youth work. New learning approaches such as gamification and artification were also explained and debated. The fireside chats focused on topics like history politics in post-Soviet and post-Yugoslav spaces, life realities for young people in Georgia and Azerbaijan, as well as the impact of war on youth engagement and civil society in Ukraine.

What can we do to develop diversity-conscious, sustainable and social youth places in our cities? What are our visions for the future of our cities? And, how can we communicate our needs to others and find support? 16 participants from Germany and Moldova explored urban spaces via participatory art techniques and urban exploratory tools. The project was organized by the Center for Independent Social Research (CISR eV.), Berlin, and the Training and Development Institute MilleniuM, Chisinau. As an outcome, the participants created instructions for four urban practices that will help you to experience the urban space as a game field.

Stories of Armenians and Azerbaijanis living together throughout the period of the past half century is a central topic of a documentary "Nostalgia Trilogy" created by Nane Khachikyan from Armenia and Gulara Azimzada from Azerbaijan. By implementing their "From Storytelling to Peacebuilding" Micro Project, the two young women wanted to share their own stories of coexistence in the countries divided by a long-standing conflict.

Our author, Teodora Mebus, an online and radio journalist, talks about the cultural project between RPTU Kaiserslautern, Lviv Polytechnic National University and NGO “Proryy-Misto”. The conception and implementation of public space and street furniture with the participation of residents, refugees and the city administration were the central goals of this project.

The aim of the Eastern Partnership as part of the European Neighbourhood Policy is to support political association and economic cooperation between the European Union and Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine. How does this system of policies, activities and measures work in reality? Together with Dr. Judith Dellheim, Christopher Forst and Anastasia Pociumban we dive deep into the past, present and future of the Eastern Partnership.

Climate change driven social injustice and discrimination of minorities are on the minds of young people today, Fridays for Future is a well-known concept worldwide. What does climate protection and its impacts look like in a country as small as the Republic of Moldova?