On September 6,Democracy Reporting Inteational Ukraine presented its new line of work – Mobile Youth Work,which will be implemented as part of the Democratic Accession,Resilience and Engagement in Ukraine (Ukraine-DARE) project with the support of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Germany. DRI spoke about its plans for Mobile Youth Work during a panel discussion at the three-day youth forum Molodvizh in the city of Lviv,which gathered thousands of young people from different parts of Ukraine.
The central theme of this year’s Molodvizh was the challenges facing the mode youth of Ukraine. The event itself became a challenge,because on the eve of its start,on September 4,Russia launched a rocket attack on peaceful quarters of the city,damaging 189 buildings and killing 7 civilians,including the Molodvizh project manager Yaryna Bazylevych.
Mobile youth work is a new direction of DRI’s work in Ukraine,which involves activities in the frontline regions of Ukraine to support youth volunteering,development of youth centres,involvement of youth in youth councils and local decision-making processes. The All-Ukrainian Youth Center became a partner of the organization in this work.
During a panel discussion in Lviv,DRI experts,together with the Ministry of Youth,public organizations and MP discussed key challenges and possible ways to improve today’s youth policy.
More than 2 million young Ukrainians are IDPs. A global national challenge is how many of them and in what way see their future in Ukraine. Another aspect of the problem is the lack of resources,of which there were not many before the full-scale invasion, said Oleksandr Sanchenko,People’s Deputy of Ukraine.
All our approaches with which we worked in the youth policy until 2022 tued out to be either irrelevant or those that begin to organically exhaust themselves when we have to come up with something new or develop separate directions that were narrower before. Another challenge and,at the same time,an opportunity is that the era of working within the walls of the youth centre has passed. The era of working with communities,people with people,specifically youth work,and not that infrastructural perception,is coming. – Iryna Poletukha,consultant on youth work and policy of the DARE project,said during the discussion.
Special attention was paid to mobile youth work,as a solution for supporting youth in communities,which will allow expanding their opportunities on the ground.
Vladyslav Yatsuk, head of the youth policy department at the Ministry of Youth and Sports,highlighted the Ministry’s plans: Thanks to mobile youth work,hundreds of young people in remote settlements points of territorial communities,on the de-occupied territory will be able to receive youth services. Currently,this is one of our priorities in youth policy. These measures will contribute to the accessibility of youth work and will help implement the barrier-free policy of the youth sphere as effectively as possible.
In its further work with youth,DRI aims to activate youth communities,focusing on the development and motivation of young people to action,which is the goal of the good quality mobile youth work.