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The most important task for young people today is to
work for a sustainable future. By preventing the negative impact of
human behaviour on the physical environment, economics and the
social area. It should be based on international co-operation among
young people. Everybody has the responsibility to care for the
planet of Earth and make it peaceful and fair to live in. It is
necessary that young people, being the future generation, take part
in the development of this sustainable future.
YCSF (Youth Concerning the Sustainable Future) is an exchange
network for youths around the Baltic. The main theme is Agenda 21
and we deal with such issues as local democracy, sustainable
development and ethnic culture in the Baltic region.
The idea of YCSF as a project was invented in Kalmar Municipality in
the spring of 1997. During the spring of 1998 two meetings with 30
participants from Kalmar, Gdansk and Kaliningrad were organised -the
first in Kalmar in March and the second in May in Gdansk. We were
talking not only about issues connected with sustainable democratic
and environmental development, but also about the lifestyles of
young people in different countries, their customs, habits and
attitudes. We discussed also equality, racism, pupils ascendancy and
much more. The most important questions were -"what can we do
for sustainable development and future?", "how to make
other youths want to take an active part in their society" and
"how to get power as youth and to make the decision makers
treat our opinions seriously?". It became obvious to us that
although we live in different countries, we deal very often with the
same problems and have the same objectives.
The initial part of the YCSF-project ended in March 1999. Now we are
working on a continuation of our successful co-operation as a
network. We managed to encourage the group from Bützow, Germany to
join our project and take part in our organisation meeting in Gdansk
in February 2000. The meeting was very successful and now we know
that we will continue our work in co-
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YCSF meeting in Gdansk - where is the
famous "Green Gate" ? |
operation with the help of UBC.
Our plan is to share our experiences and opinions with the others,
and thus help them with their initiatives locally. The basic
objectives are to spread the information about Agenda 21,
sustainable development and future, and make other young people more
conscious of what is happening and aware of their possibilities to
influence their |
societies.
We organise meetings for all the network members twice a year, each
in different countries. As a network we want to act locally and
internationally. Locally, we work on local projects connected with
Agenda 21 and other youth activities. On an international level we
want to have exchange meetings to share our experiences,
brainstorming about new project ideas and to have inspiration
seminars. Now we are thinking about closer co-operation with UBC.
Perhaps it is a nice idea to have a commission on youth within UBC?
YCSF network is open for everyone: we are looking for participants
especially from Latvia, Estonia, Finland, Norway and Denmark, but
everyone is welcomed.
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