The Youth Forum, organised by the EU funded project “EU support to the coordination and implementation of BiH’s National Youth Policy (EUNYP)“ took place today in Jahorina, with the goal to raise awareness on the importance of the youth strategies at the municipal, entity, BiH level as well as in Brčko District BiH.

The idea of Youth Forum is to connect the stakeholders who are dealing with issues of youth in order to generate their ideas in youth strategy areas. The participants had the opportunity to gather insight into the opinions and positions of the youth representatives, in particular young people who – participated in the trainings organised by EUNYP project.

The Youth Forum is highlighting the fact that young people in BiH are faced with different, often interrelated challenges that affect various aspects of their lives, starting from education and a lack of employment opportunities within the labour market through to insufficient social protection and living standards. Therefore it is important to change young people in BiH from a passive to an active approach where they take responsibility for their own future and how stakeholders can support this approach.

The Youth Forum is a venue to generate ideas since there are a considerable number of different stakeholders and actors in Bosnia and Herzegovina that are involved in the youth sector, and the interconnection and communication between them is mostly based on random actions, which should be changed to a more specific and sustainable strategy.

Participants of the Youth Forum were representatives of Commission for Coordination of Youth Issues in BiH, relevant NGOs, as well as selected public officials in charge of youth issues in BiH and young people who were part of the trainings organised by EUNYP project.

The European Union funds this project through the Instrument for Pre-Accession Assistance (IPA 2008) in the amount of 606,000 euro. The EUNYP project (www.youthpolicy.ba) aims at improving the position of youth in Bosnia and Herzegovina through the creation of the appropriate conditions for better and more efficient dialogue and more functional coordination among the stakeholders responsible for youth issues in BiH. The Project started in January 2012 and will last until the end of December 2013. It is implemented by a Consortium led by EEO Group S.A. in association with EPRD Ltd, Particip Gmbh and OKC. The main project partner is Commission for the Coordination of Youth Issues in BiH (CCYI).

For more information, please contact the project team:
Email: info@youthpolicy.ba
Telephone: +387 33 264 670