How youth organisations can advocate for their rights

This week (17th – 22nd June), as part of its Academy for member organisations, the European Youth Forum organised a training session for national youth councils and international non-governmental youth organisations on advocacy. This session supported members to identify the core strengths that they already have in terms of advocacy, as well as increase their capacity to advocate.

The three-day session aimed to enable Youth Forum members to transfer their daily work – youth work – into advocacy and to support them to develop their own advocacy processes.

As well as covering the general framework of advocacy: the theoretical and the practical approach (the what, when, how, why), the session gave delegates an understanding of a political cycle (both at the national and European levels, by using case examples). There were practical sessions too, such as on identifying the target groups: policy makers (such as politicians and civil servants), business, NGOs, public etc.

The 26 delegates also gained insight into the political actors’ perspective, by looking at the questions: What do they want? How do they want it? When do they want it? They also looked at building a coalition on an issue with other NGOs and at political communication.

Through a step-by-step process of creating their own campaign, participants gained practical know-how which they can implement in their own work.

The Youth Forum’s Academy continues in Vilnius this weekend with communications training and its Pool of Trainers meeting. Keep up to date using the hashtag #YFJAcademy.