Summary of Vranje's Youth Parliament - 18, 19, 20 November 2010

Reception at Gimnasia school, speech and division of the participants into their respective committees

During the General Assembly

Presenting the resolution on Sexual Education and LGBT population (GA)

The participants of the LGBT committee and me

Group picture (not all the participants are here)

Aleksandar and me

Defending the resolution and answering questions

Listening proposals and ideas

Presenting the resolution of the committee about Culture in Vranje

Ivica Mihajlovic, President of the General Assembly, and me

Debating and defending resolutions

General Assembly over, resolutions adopted: singing Bob Marley's song "get up, stand up"

Guillaume Macquaire with the participants of his committee about Culture in Vranje

Veronika Steklacova (chairing committee about Serbia and EU and some participants of the Youth Parliament

From left to right: Barbara Le Guennec (chairing the committee about environment), Ivica Mihajlovic (President), me and Guillaume Macquaire (chairing the committee about Vranje and culture)

One resolution

Presenting the resolution about environement

Defending ideas

The idea of implementing a Youth Parliament in Vranje was born in June 2010 when Barbara (EVS volunteer in Generator as well) and I discussed about the need of organising a project in the field of active and democratic participation in Vranje's community for young people.

The organisation of the project took a lot of energy and time, for several reasons: first the amount of young people we wanted to reach, meaning that our aim was to involve all high schools of Vranje and not only the 3 or 4 biggest ones. Second, the fact that reaching the schools' directors was not always very easy, mainly because of their busy schedules. Third, the moment when we started somehow to promote the idea was in the beginning of summer time, which is equal to vaccation so it was more difficult to contact the students representatives of the schools, the directors, teachers and even Generator's staff in some cases.

Finally, even if our initial idea was to create a Vranje's Youth Parliament independent from the European Youth Parliament we were conscious that we needed some support from people who are already used to organise similar activities. For this reason and for information purposes only, we contacted the European Youth Parliament representation in Serbia. After talking to them and presenting our project's ideas, they welcomed very openly our initiative and decided to support us in the implementation of the activities. In this respect the representative with whom we were in contact promissed to send the Committees chairs, one per committee, meaning 7 in total. Unfortunatly, at the very last moment the European Youth Parliament was obliged to remove their support because of an internal misunderstasnding inside the organisation and because of paralel activities which were their foremost priorities.

Without entering in too many details, my EVS colleagues and I had to readapt the configuration of the committees and to get ready to chair by ourselves the 4 remaining committees:

1- Environement

2- Sexual Education and LGBT

3- Empowering Vranje through culture

4- Serbia and its future integration in the EU

Briefly, Vranje's Youth Parliament was organised in the following way:

First day: Team Building activities


According to their degree of interest expressed in their applications, the participants were spread into their respective committees. Inside their committee, the responsible Chair organised team building activities in order to make the participants know and trust each other. At the end of these activities, mainly composed of games which were taken from the EYP, the particpants started to think individually about the subject of the committee, and to present their ideas to their colleagues.

Second day: Work in Committees


The second day was exclusively dedicated to drafting the resolutions. The participants had to agree about what was important for them about the thematic of their committees and to write down the final resolution to be presented during the General Assembly. The Chairs took the responsibilty to write by computer the final resolutions.

Third and last day: General Assembly


The objective of the General Assembly was to adopt the resolutions. Each committee had to present their resolution in front of the GA. A time for defending, and a time for debate and questions was organised before the voting process. The General Assembly was presided by Ivica Mihajlovic and assisted by the 3 Chairs which didn't belong to the committee presenting the resolution.

All the resolutions were adopted by simple majority, the one about LGBT having caused the most dynamic debate.
During the GA, one local journalist was present and made a quick interview to Barbara and me.

Follow-up f the Youth Parliament - Ideas 


The idea of the Youth Parliament was to provide young people of Vranje the opportunity to express themselves about topics of their interest and to make their voices heard at local level.
Our objective is to enable young people to meeting their local government representatives in a round table, where one or two representatives of each committee will defend and explain the importance of the resolutions they adopted.

This kind of round-table is extremely important because it allows the establishement of direct contact between an important part of the citizens - the young people - and their local government, and it proves the interest of the local government representatives towards the voice of young future or actual electors, fostering in this way participative democracy.

For more information about this project and the results, don't hesitate in asking your questions in the space given to comments.
You can also find the resolution folowing the link http://www.generator.org.rs/vest.php?crypt=XFYPA1ZTHwtWUl8EBFQMFlcGCVYSFw0JVFAGWDo3MzcwZGJhZQ%3D%3D