Questions for this discussion round are:

1. What are the main insights from the morning's inputs?

2. How is solidarity as a concept perceived in different sectors (politics, public institutions, civil society/NGOs, business, etc.) and at different levels (local, national, EU, globally)?

Add main ideas from the discussion to the Padlet, under this column.

Please use the name of their "colour" on Padlet, in case the rapporteur has a questions/ needs clarification regarding your notes.

Next up will be the lunch break from 12:30 to 14:00.

Make a short round of introductions about all practices you had a chance to get aquatinted with during both rounds of Solidarity LABs (1-2 minutes each practice by whoever was in those groups).

Key questions:

1. What are the main trends, similarities or differences from the practices you heard of during the Solidarity LAB? 

2. How is solidarity reflected in our national / international youth work, based on the practices you got to know during the Solidarity LAB and from your own experience?

Add main ideas to the Padlet, under this column, not forgetting to add the name ("colour") of the group for further reference.

To close the discussion please make a short round of sharing on "How was the day for you (this does not have to be part of the Padlet)?" and if you have any feedback to the team, they can pass it through the "messenger" from the team.

At the end of this discussion round identify a person from the group who will be the representative of the in the "panel of conclusions" of the day.  A conference team member should not be assigned as one of the panelists.

The role of the panelist will be to share about their group's opinions already expressed in the two rounds of the discussion groups (they can use Padlet comments and their own observation).

Be at the main room by 17:25 the latest.

Questions for this discussion round are:

1. What are the main insights from the morning's inputs (the three Keynote Speeches)?

2. From your practice, what are the preferred / dominant forms of active participation among young people in Europe and why? Are there any striking differences or obvious similarities?

3. How can we, as youth work sector support active youth participation? What are we already doing? What do we need to do more of / less of?

4. What questions are you taking with you to the Solidarity LAB, to address the resource persons (who are same as the Keynote Speakers from these two days)>

Add main ideas to the Padlet, under this column, not forgetting to add the name ("colour") of the group for further reference.

Thank each other for the three rounds of discussion groups together, as this is the last time you are meeting in this constalation.

importance of solidarity

connection to active participation

mind opening: different perspectives of solidarity

tackled topics which are very important

data on different aspects were nice to see

theoretical background was important --- understanding solidarity

problems were brought up (money, implementation)

Solidarity is perceived:

- humanitarian aid

- not only the political space

- support (listening, helping, funding)

- creating communities - from local to bigger

- feeling and action between people (2-3 people to continent)

- institutions expressing their solidarity

- need a common enemy to feel solidarity

- concept of crisis - solidarity arises in times of crises

- solidarity is sharing

Academic, NGOs, NAs, volunteers.

Low income volunteering?

Paid volunteering might be controversial but may be the answer for engaging people from poorer backgrounds (doesn't have to be financial reward but other material reward for what those people need)

Resistance to change, some problems persisting for a long time, connection between volunteering and political participations

Action as such on different levels is important

How to motivate youth to vote if candidates are not trustworthy

The world civilization to replace it as human kind

Disagreement for using volunteering to support political enagagement

Not confusing terminology - the fact we are here is political

• Thinking of Dr. Stuart Fox speech: Think of a programme which can involve youngster with a poor background --> think of a different approach and have someone to represent them

• All 3 keynotes were a really great build-up of knowledge: from the origins of solidarity to the results/studies/outcomes of solidarity (with solidarity projects)

• Reflecting on how solidarity with a perspective of "Shared experiences" (like Covid-19)

• Standing together for a cause is a form of solidarity --> Solidarity is a tool than can be used in a good and bad way

• Are Civic engagement and political participation correlated?

• Disadvantaged people (eg. poor) do not have the "energy" to search for what politicians have to say

2.

• As an employee in the private sector: the attention is more on the image (brand) rather than action

• Solidarity is different for every sector: for the private is more about the social responsibility

• Example from the private sector (Italy): is better to be generative than exploitative

• Personal level: what pushes you to be solitary?

• Authenticity of solidarity: what does it mean to the person? --> actions of people/company

Solidarity = supporting community (on local level)/....

Solidarity for all stakeholders - not to forget anybody

...

• What is volunteering?

Volunteering can be sometimes seen as an escape from bad situations.

Volunteering in the sense of how someone is also ready to give or risk (for example young people having jobs and joining this type of discussions);

Volunteering in different societies - not a thing sometimes (Finland case); What is the definition of the volunteering again?

Volunteering - you kind of assuming that someone who is volunteering cares about people he/she is volunteering to; Why do we need to make it always about inequality and tolerance (respecting differences)?

India vs Europe (education and volunteering) - In Europe it is somehow expected from you g people to have volunteering experience and for India it does not exist (input); There should be regulation that makes it volunteering for good (for application of the college etc) for age;

Youth wants to be heard, seen, respected;

Volunteer as a way to improve your soft skills;

• Volunteering and politics

Sometimes politics seem as bad concept, but it is also our responsibility and should be closely closed to volunteering.

Solidarity from different angles (UK) connected to wing in politics sometimes (What does it mean if you think that left wing supports taking wealth from wealthy people and in that way helping others?)

Word"solidarity" sometimes (UK, Italy) would mean that you are close to right or left wing;

Local and level of the Parlament for Solidarity - ensure that it goes to the lowest levels of the society;

• Term Solidarity

Roots of the word "Solidarity" interconnection - how close or how far are we today from that? Are opportunities equally given?

Solidarity- what happens between people? Do we need the word solidarity? Concept to share? Or concept that we have chosen describes a certain action (not just words) - culturally sensitive? Why to avoid using it sometimes? More about teaching children to help each other rather than establishing one definition. Words are useful but limiting.

Solidarity definition by Salto - active citizenship, empathy and inclusion (gives directions); Intention should be taken into consideration. (Initiation needs to have some motivation - even if pushing was intentional)

Second question

2. Marginalized younger people and our expectation how they are engaged in volunteering;

Social and community work; but starts on the street level - meaning how we are practically taught

• support to achieve goals

• caring

• crisis situations as feeling helpless and solidarity to gain the control back

• butterfy impact / indirect impact of the solidarity projects

• positive effect, but also negative

• small steps, not about money but about values

How is solidarity reflected?

• created cooperation, bring people together

• community building

• 'music is solidarity'

• solidarity with the nature, but also with people

• empowerment

• motivation, offering meaningful activity

• integration of Ukranian youth to include them in the community

Projects of LAB1: Theatre for homeless + Upcycling

• Similarities: art + creativity + community + expression + giving chances

Projects of LAB2: interesting to hear different methods + going through the solutions together and find a solution

--> How can we spread the word about these opportunities? Support.

2.

• Natalia: hosting Ukrainian volunteers to do social media and make them feel at home

• Be there for someone (even at work, not only volunteering)

To include environment and non-human animals into solidarity talks

Empathy towards homeless people, avoiding stereotypes about why people get homeless

Asking people what they need before the action

Solidarity projects, projects shouln't start only with idea but mainly recognizing the need in society

Networking possibilities (Matus)

Sometimes it is useful for practitioners to go back and asking yourself why am i doing that, what a solidarity means to me.

Interrelations non-formal and formal learning, sometimes they do not interact, encouraging organizations to grow professionally - how my participants can multiply opportunities

What about solidarity inbetween disadvantaged (like between prisoners)

Solidarity actions where many different stakeholders interact are more likely to reach long-term or ongoing impact

SOLIDARITY VALUES

Creativity

Validation, recognition of everybody's value

Empathy

Giving voice to everybody (including animals/planet)

Trust

Positive communication

Tolerance

Respect

Diversity, its appreciation

Nondiscrimination

Sustainability

Fighting radicalization (but some topics need radical actions), cyber threats/cyber bullying, unity, non-violence (conflict resolution, communication, etc.),

• It was interesting to get to know another Europeer, of another country

• More time for the Solidarity Lab presentations (especially for the theatre company) --> we didn't go deep into the solidarity topic

• Too much time to discuss (in the afternoon) and too less time to discuss this morning (due to the type of topics)

• Interesting keynote speeches

3. Community festival - supporting Ukrainian people, working on problems which may arise; learning how to make solidarity project,

4. Zaježova small village , the people from the village came together - they print tshirts and get donations in terms of used clothes; they remake it in their own style and sustainability based; three four brands opened from there;

Solidarity of Slovak people for their own brand that also takes care about environment;

2. What do we have as difference and similarity?

Example: Different sources of issues as a reason why someone can or is excluded from the society. Like Ukraine needed to escape to war and integration can go harder, people who are mentally

Housing first it is hard to have unique approach and it is always not so easy to have just one approach or solution; also the projects change in their course in terms during implementation their nature changes

We always need to see how other side thinks or feels something so we can not think that our approach is "perfect" just because it sounds like that;

Solidarity different types of solidarity

Polish project- Organizing events for Ukrainians; promoting and showing solidarity in many ways

Solidarity is maybe another way to say " Empowerment "

Solidarity comes with different priorities (Palestine, Green Planet, reverse Brexit...)

Educational system - this should be touched in school; subject-wise or practically wise?

Discussion - how to implement that in educational system?

• There are many questions about the construction of the index on media freedom.

• Hard to define where the limit on freedom of speech is.

• Critical thinking is the foundation for understanding different opinion and thus the basis of media freedom

• Good examples of alternative participation, eg: Taylor Swift

• Representation: in the Parliament the ration of young people is very low

• Role of money in democracies - private money financing political campaigns - put more public money in the system

  
  

2. From your practice, what are the preferred / dominant forms of active participation?

• protests (eg. Poland: abortion)

• leave their anti-democratic countries

  
  

3. How can we support active youth participation?

• give them the support

• start from very young age to teach the critical thinking and that they have voice

• breaking the hierarchical power of youth workers

• create spaces where they can act

• have local contact points to help (like regional contact points in Austria) to support the work of the youth workers

4. Questions and messages to keynotes:

Corinna: Pass egal - good initiative in Austria for the people without Austrian citizenship to 'vote'

What will be the role of Africa, Europe - how can Europe counteract China and Russia influence in Africa. What will be the position of Europe in term values?

David: Democracy Brochure 'no media in Austria is fully independent' - the production of the Brochure was banned

Where is the limit to the publications?

Stuart: Apart from the family background what factors play a role in the voting behavior?

The effect of different types of volunteering?

Are there differences in the statistics regarding local, national, European elections.

Aspect of non-internally motivated volunteering -- eg university credit, Christianity etc.

Marko: How can we engage the Young people?

How to tackle fake news

Youth people should have a say ehat they think about how to change current state of democracy

"They take a decision from an empty chair" - what is the percentage of empty chairs taken decision about

Not polarized but fragmented world - creating different bubbles, and lack of communication inbetween those bubbles

We should pose questions more than presenting answers

One piece of the puzzle is not a whole puzzle

Restrictions on social media about serious topics

Seeing people protesting, being active, and organizations do not take intiative to take them in to formalize their status

Question 2:

Movements having to structuralize themselves to be recognized, fitting into the system to change it, adapting the language to the institutions, having adequate language to formulate requests

Flashmops - young people create short routines with a statement to a specific problem, so they start to understand protesting as fun

Is encouraging youngsters to boycott enough? Is it making people more politicized?

Educating young people about different challenges and the public in a compassionate way

What is missing:

Connect woth youngsters, listening them actively, understanding their needs, what they have ti say,

Motivating youngsters, waking them up from a depression through fun activities and arts

Question 4.

For Corina: myth about young people voting for right wing spectrum - doesn't it again hugely depend on social-economic background of people? (In SK, it is the case based on recent research)

How to get the hearts of youth for bright future?

• Speech from David Diaz-Jogeix: Realization that in Europe we have more free countries

• Speech from Marko Kovacic: really interesting was the fact that T. Swift has such a great influence on the political side + the gap between perceptions and actions (not assuming, but see the data)

• Speech from Corina Privulescu: the speech was very data driven + politicians don't speak to young people (maybe because the politicians are old?) + think of some "motivational" means to involve young people in politics

2.

• Example in Denmark YYYYY --> sense of belonging to something + connection to values of democracy and civic engagement

• Example of Model UN: active way to get young people into politics and understand how institutions works

• Expressions in social media: how to be active (especially after Covid-19) --> YT videos misleads information + memes are a great means to make young people engaged and curious about something + social media are private

• Relation between celebrities and politics: are there in our countries celebrities who incite to vote for some specific party (like in the US)?

• Some examples of active participation: Fridays for Future + EuroPeers

3.

• Paid volunteering?

• Involve youth in decision making

• Information about all the opportunities

From the first keynote speaker we were debating about his sentence how we need to use "right tools" and if the utilization of the right tools is the main issue that discourages active youth participation (different expectations and blaming another side, either we who tend to think sometimes that youth are not participating or youth who maybe sometimes are not reached properly in order to participate).

We could also question the way we approach to those who are marginalized (in Europe, in Africa or in Latin America) because in majority of cases we see a problem and we see one solution for the problem. Example was directed towards homeless people and how it is not just giving them shelter or home but moving them away for social groups on the street and substance abuse etc.

From the second keynote speaker we were comparing some of the countries (like India) - regimes that contribute to democratic or non-democratic society and how it does not necessarily mean that people in non-democratic countries are unhappy. It is more about how those regimes or countries treat young people, do they encourage them to be interested in politics or with different means and tools (through media or social media) they radicalize them .

Quote that we can highlight is "Participation is about the power and power is about resources."

We could argue if Social media and Media if not used or controlled by the government they do not always radicalize people. For example some media wont publish names of crime offenders to avoid blaming foreigners in certain countries. Also youth can move from neutral to left wing as well, because they do not want tension within society which is dictated by the narrative of far right .

From the Freedom of speech we were collectively shocked by the amount of statistical data (we argued about the fact that EU has always been seen as unity but still in some East European and Central European countries still dont follow the values that should come together with the meaning of "unity.

2

We noticed that issue of how we are addressing dominant forms of youth participation in Europe and outside of Europe.

We concluded that youth are not always informed well, especially through education of how many opportunities they have to show their participation (and contribution) to the society and community on the wider level. Examples were from India, Portugal, Italy, Germany etc.

We questioned different forms of participation- workshops, volunteering activities, trainings and how sometimes there are issues of other nature like maybe for people who have social anxiety, depression etc and at the moment when they feel a need or want to say something, to be seen or heard, they have those problems preventing them so there is a need for different, unique approach even within small communities.

3

Supporting youth participation is about finding the right motive to give them the reason to participate. We also could agree that it starts with ground and the objective and impact (positive) that we need to think about. Impact as not something that should last only through the lifespan of the project but something that can change core practices of one society/mentality. For example, independency of girls, and roles of other institutions, parents, school in that process especially in the mentalities which believe girls are on scale less or should not be educated but have different roles, or poverty or seeing sexual exploitation, youth washing like trying to give "fake" motive to people to participate so we can call one government "progressive" while it has no actual intention of including youth because of believing in their potential, or changes which they can bring.

I was in the lab group with Marko, and Im positively surprised about differences we discovered in the lab group about motives of youth to participate depending of policy changes or social changes. We were discussing cases of South vs North Germany etc. Also we touched how youth should be seen or felt seen in order to be motivated to actively participate.