Consultation: | FYEG General Assembly 2022 |
---|---|
Agenda item: | 2. Plans |
Proposer: | FYEG |
Status: | Published |
Submitted: | 04/28/2022, 18:47 |
P1: Activity Plan 2022-2023
Plan text
Activity Plan 2022-2023
Strengthening the FYEG Network and Membership Coordination
FYEG Member Organisations (MOs) constitute the base on which FYEG operates as a
federation, and it is through MOs that FYEG has the best possibilities to
achieve change on an everyday basis. Therefore, it is clear that MOs need to be
at the centre of FYEG’s work.
The Member Organisation survey executed in the beginning of 2022 showed once
again that members vary in size and impact from small or newly established
organisations who focus on recruiting members to large and well established
organisations who have parent parties in government and focus on putting forward
the youth voice in the legislative agenda.
One of FYEG’s main roles and challenges is to bring these very heterogeneous
member organisations together and cater to their needs so that we can work
together towards the common vision of Europe that we share.
In the year 2022/2023, FYEG plans to continue organising activities to
strengthen its network and the coordination of its MOs.
Network Activities
From June 2022 to June 2023 FYEG will facilitate political exchanges at the
federation level through two international activities:
The annual General Assembly (GA) of FYEG is the highest decision-making body of
FYEG as it reviews and validates FYEG’s work. Moreover, the delegates of Member
Organisations elect the leadership of the organisation (the Executive Committee
and the Secretary-General) and approve new members to the federation. Moreover,
the FYEG General Assembly is the occasion for FYEG Member Organisations, Working
Groups and other FYEG bodies to bring forward and debate political resolutions
on various policy issues. This is the moment for the network to discuss and
propose policies on current events. The General Assembly will be held in late
spring together with the annual Spring Conference. The Spring Conference is an
open public event, held next to the General Assembly. It brings together
representatives of the federation, FYEG’s partners, young activities and expert
speakers (for example academics and politicians) in order to discuss and debate
a political topic.
The Young Green Forum (Forum of the Member Organisations) is a meeting of the
representatives from FYEG MOs, representatives of working groups and other
bodies of FYEG. It functions as a prelude to the GA and it is an opportunity for
FYEGers to meet each other, work towards strengthening the network and have
exchanges on organisational and political topics. It creates the space to
discuss FYEG as an organisation and also provides space for Member Organisations
to give input to improve FYEG’s work and activities. The Forum will be held
online at the beginning of the year.
Membership Coordination
FYEG will continue its commitment for the development and the coordination of
its Member Organisations, as they are the heart of our Federation. To this end,
the Federation will continue organising regional meetings. The Regional division
will be revised to create five regional areas: East, Balkans, South, Center-West
and North.
The regional meetings will be organised by the members of the Executive
Committee who are responsible for these regions. The frequency of the meetings
will be set together with the MOs while ensuring consistent coordination and
contacts with all the regions. FYEG will also continue monitoring the engagement
and representation of member organisations in its activities and structures.
In addition and in line with its strategy, FYEG will put more focus on two
regions: South and East. To support them and improve their engagement, FYEG will
organise one live regional meeting for the South Region. The Regional meeting
will be held in one of the countries of the Southern MOs. In line with FYEG’s
strategy to improve the engagement of FYEG’s member organisations from the East,
FYEG will continue to support and cooperate with the Cooperation and Development
Network. Moreover, FYEG will actively participate in the European Green Party
(EGP) Balkan network meetings to empower its newly created Balkan region member
organisations.
Finally, FYEG will also put more focus on some individual organisations, through
the onboarding process for its candidate member organisation and specific
attention to struggling members. From June 2022 to June 2023 there will be three
Study Visits done by the Secretary General and EC members. Study visits are to
countries or regions with a strategic focus, where there are new candidate
organisations applying for full membership or a potential member organisation in
a country where FYEG is not represented. FYEG Plans to do study visits to Italy,
Austria and Czech Republic.
2. Capacity Building and Educational Activities
FYEG believes capacity building is central for empowering its Member
Organisations to be more resilient, resourceful, sustainable, effective and
efficient in delivering their mission on a national and European level; and
consequently beneficial for the development of the Federation as a whole. An
increased capacity of our MOs will also facilitate more young Green
representation in political mandates at the national and European level.
The output of the Member Organisation Survey showed that different MOs have
different needs in capacity building. Smaller MOs with less active volunteers
are interested in volunteer engagement and retention while larger MOs are more
interested in fundraising. For this reason, from June 2022 to June 2023, FYEG
plans the following activities, in order to improve the capacities and resources
of its member organisations and develop their competences in empowering young
people at the national level.
Young Greens Decentralised Training (YGDT)
The YG Decentralised Training is a new educational activity that FYEG will
implement to support young green organisations in need of a more structured
capacity building process. The training targets especially smaller or newly
established organisations, and will include 7 to 9 MOs per year. The training
sessions will be given by external trainers and the programme will be tailored
to the needs of the organisations under the topical framework of “Building a
vision and recruiting members”. The programme will take place during a period of
6 months and include live and online collective training as well as individual
consultations. The same program will be repeated for a second training cycle
with different organisations for the next activity period. Each cycle will be
delivered for a group of seven to nine Member Organisations.
Fundraising Training
In the year 2022/2023 FYEG is planning to deliver two online training sessions
on fundraising. The sessions will be facilitated by the Secretariat where
possible and will bring experts to provide the training when necessary. The
first one will be focused on general fundraising, such as fundraising via the
Members of the European Parliament, organising Study Visits to the Parliament,
parent party funding and individual fundraisings. The second training will focus
on grant applications such as the Erasmus+ Grant or the Council of Europe’s
grants.
FYEG also uses its educational activities to create a space for young people to
develop progressive ideas with relevant and meaningful political output.
Although FYEG’s key aim is to support and invest in its members, we use our
annual educational activities to invest in a broader group of young people to
become skilful changemakers. Our educational activities empower new leaders, not
only from FYEG Member Organisations, but also from other progressive youth
movements. The non-formal educational methodology we use in our educational
activities empower participants by giving them space to co-shape the educational
process and making each of them an actor of change.
FYEG Working Groups are thematic structures that bring together individuals
passionate on one subject to work deeper on it. FYEG working groups operate
within the FYEG Working Group Guideline. We will continue to foster working
groups to ensure a proper follow-up to the educational activities, use them as a
means to continue engaging participants in FYEG structures and also as a tool to
ensure radical policy ideas developed in these activities are turned into
concrete policies that are followed-up with campaign outputs.
Mental Health is Political Work Plan
In 2022 FYEG will organise a year long educational activity called “The Politics
of Mental Health”. This activity aims to understand the root causes and
consequences of worsening mental health among young people and to ensure the
youth's role in building and sharing the solutions needed to address it.
Two main international activities are foreseen in the upcoming year:
“This oppressive system and our mental health”, an international activity
that will take place from 22-27 July in France, hosted by Les Jeunes
Écologistes. The summer camp will last 6 days and will bring together 50
young activists from all over Europe to explore how mental health problems
affect oppressed people and activists. We will look at cases of repressed
freedom of expression, right to protest and access to information in
Europe, as issues that affect the engagement of young people in civic
processes. We will then create space to learn about methods to address
problems of mental health among young activists and people who face
discrimination.
“Mental health in Progress LAB” will take place in Brussels, Belgium by
the end of the year. Through this final activity we want to engage a wider
audience with the topic of mental health among youth, presenting the
results and solutions developed during the work plan. We will gather
around 80 people in an event with elements of a seminar, training and
public conference. We will invite representatives of youth international
NGOs, party political youth organisations and movements to the open part
of the event and discuss how to join forces in lobbying for better mental
health at various levels and establish an international network of mental
health supporters to work together in the future.
We need the Green YOU(th)! - 2023 Work Plan
Youth participation is firstly hindered by the precarity young people are in.
Dealing with unemployment and in-work poverty, housing insecurity, mental health
issues, identity-based discrimination and more, they are in no favorable
position to engage in civic life. At the intersection of discrimination and
poverty, disadvantage youth face even more barriers. At the same time, youth
organisations that represent the interests of millions of young people in Europe
and carry out the most meaningful youth work, struggle to access structural
resources to sustain them. This is more than ever true in the new world where,
adding on to the climate crisis, the European youth faces a post-pandemic world,
European war, threats to rule of law in Hungary and Poland and more. The 2-year-
long project we designed (Work Plan 2023 would constitute the first year of
action) will support all young people to have a say, influence decision-making
and increase diversity in participation, with a focus on election times
everywhere in Europe.
The work plan will consist of 3 main international activities:
The 3-day-long “International kick-off: Democra See Ya?” will bring
together 80 young people to inspire them to take active part in this 2-
year-long FYEG project where we will influence elections at various
levels. This event lays the foundation exploring the status of democracy
in 2023, connecting young campaigners, community organisers and candidates
to a new generation of Green young leaders. We will prepare tangible tools
to inspire more young people to join the project.
The 5-day-long summer camp “Building the Green Story!” will see 50 young
people come together to elaborate a common narrative for Europe’s
progressive youth. During this event we will explore the importance of
narrative building, storytelling and political communication. Participants
will get trained on how to frame complex issues through clear messages and
impactful stories, and will be guided by experts to elaborate the
foundational document outlining the winning story to influence politics in
time of elections as a Young Green activist.
“The Online Influencelection Games” will be a 4-month long gamification
experiment that will see 150 young people competing in a healthy
environment to become the Young Influencelection leaders in 2024. A series
of 4 online monthly training will develop the practical skills needed to
push the narrative stemmed from the previous activity. Hosted parallelly,
a digital platform will gamify the learning process, and turn it into a
series of competitive games where trainers can challenge trainees (or
where trainees can challenge each other). By the end of the four months, a
small group of trainees will be promoted to Young Influencelection Leaders
and become the facilitators of the digital platform to be run in 2024 in
preparation for the European elections.
Inclusion and Diversity
Over the years, FYEG has been very successful in ensuring equality and inclusion
of gender and sexual minorities in the organisation. We are very proud that we
are one of the most feminist youth organisation in Europe, with progressive
quotas to ensure representation in leadership, safe spaces in our activities and
gender budgeting.
We would like to replicate the same success and improve the inclusion of young
people from underrepresented groups, especially from racialised communities.
However, the diversity within FYEG is dependent on the diversity within its
Member Organisations and the green movement. Therefore FYEG will focus on
increasing the level of inclusion and diversity both at FYEG’s educational
activities and within the membership of FYEG’s member organisations. Through
training, FYEG will support its members in developing methods for political
activation within the racialised communities and recruiting more members from
racialised communities.
All the educational and capacity building activities will have a session on
inclusion, especially of those coming from racialised backgrounds. Moreover,
FYEG will continue to collect data on the inclusion of underrepresented groups,
especially the number of BIPOC participants and speakers. This way, we will
ensure that we actively follow and improve representation targets. In order to
improve the representation of youth from racialised communities, we will also
continue our partnership with organisations such as Equinox, Union of Justice
and reach out to other youth organisations.
3. Bringing forward the youth perspective
FYEG's main goal is to ensure youth participation and representation in
democratic processes and political institutions at national and European levels.
The organisation’s efforts are aimed at collecting and amplifying the youth
voices, with a particular focus on those that are underrepresented in the
political discourses.
As a voice from the youth, FYEG is always committed to pioneering new, radical,
progressive policy demands not only in the field of youth but also in other
areas that predominantly affects youth, in line with our political platform. For
this to happen, FYEG will focus its work on three main areas:
Lobbying, advocating and campaigning for the youth perspective through
collaborating with our partners
The lobbying, advocating and campaigning work is one of the central activities
performed by FYEG. This is facilitated by collaborating with strategic partners.
For this reason, In 2022/2023 FYEG will keep cooperating with the following
partners to improve its political impact at the European level:
The work carried out from our elected representative in the Advisory Council of
Youth to Council of Europe, is a key element for disseminating and lobbying for
our green ideas. In 2021 FYEG could elect again its own representative in the
Advisory Council on Youth, ensuring a continuity of the advocacy activities
performed in the last two mandates. The Council agreed to start the drafting
process of a policy recommendation on the climate crisis, thanks to the good
work of FYEG representatives. FYEG will continue its work on the climate policy
to ensure that there will be more funds for green-minded projects through the
EYF. Moreover, FYEG will keep monitoring the democracy and transparency of the
processes within the Council. Finally, FYEG is committed to ensure the work of
the Council of Europe is beneficial and supportive to all youth organisations,
including the smaller ones, to enhance their development and the development of
the youth movement as a whole.
The European Youth Forum is the platform of youth organisations in Europe. FYEG
maintains a close relationship with the Forum, through the work of an EC
delegate. This entails participating in their events, policy discussions and
building relationships with its members. This allows FYEG to closely follow the
Youth Forum work and to hold them accountable in case they fail to adequately
lobby for youth rights and widening the civic space for European youth work and
European youth organisations. In 2022/2023 FYEG foresees to participate in the
two main in real life events of the Forum: the Conference of Members (COMEM), to
be held in October 2022 and May 2023.
FYEG collaborates with the European Green Party (EGP) as its independent youth
wing. FYEG will send delegates to the EGP Councils and table radical resolutions
highlighting the issues and struggles young people are impacted by, to push the
Green movement in the progressive direction. Moreover, our Co-Spokepersons will
closely follow the work of EGP by attending its Committee Meetings to represent
our young green voice within the Party. FYEG will attend the EGP Councils that
will be held in June and November 2022.
FYEG will continue to cooperate with the Greens/EFA in the European Parliament,
in particular with young MEPs on initiatives that are also political priorities
for FYEG. FYEG will reach out to (young) MEPs who are working on policies FYEG
has interest in, to invite them to speak at FYEG events or endorse FYEG
campaigns. FYEG will maintain relations with the Greens/EFA secretariat,
including its campaigners to work together to deliver strategic and creative
campaigns.
FYEG will commit to building stronger bonds with primarily, but not only, youth
organisations or other progressive organisations to do joint campaigns, public
statements or manifestos in order to achieve greater impact and diversify our
organisation outreach.
Lobbying, advocating and campaigning for the youth perspective through our
campaigns
In addition to the collaboration with our main Partners and other radical
organisations, in the year 2022/2023 FYEG will be committed in two main
campaigns.
The first campaign will be focused on Mental Health as a result of the
International Activities carried out during the year (see Mental Health is
Political Work Plan). The connotation and direction of the campaign will result
from the subsequent outputs of these activities. A specific working group will
be responsible for the Campaign, coordinated by one member of the EC. The
Campaign should have a specific goal, that will be decided by the EC according
to the outcomes of the work plan. The Working Group will also contribute to the
campaign plan. The Working Group will be responsible to frame the campaign and
draft the advocacy plan, with the support of Communications Officer and the
Project Manager. The EC will always monitor this process and will take all the
essential political decisions.
The second campaign will address the topic of a critical resolution submitted to
the GA. The EC and the Secretary General will select the resolution together.
The planning phase of the Campaign will see an involvement of the EC, the
Secretariat and the MOs, to set the goals and structure of the Campaign. The
Communications Officer will be in charge of drafting the campaign and advocacy
plan with the support of the Secretary General. Once the Campaign is ready, MOs
will be involved in disseminating it.
FYEG Member Organisations have voiced clear interest in pioneering new and
radical ideas and taking part in coordinated campaigns across Europe. There are
primarily two arenas where FYEGers can come up with, discuss and form political
ideas: the educational activities and the network activities. By organising
campaigns based on the outcomes of these two events, together with our member
organisations and other young green activists, we aim to fulfil the needs of our
member organisations and improve the interest and engagement in European and EU
politics.
We will also use these campaigns to build stronger bonds with primarily, but not
only, youth organisations or other progressive organisations in order to achieve
greater impact and diversify our organisation. We will use joint campaigns,
joint statements or manifestos.
Lobbying, advocating and campaigning for the youth perspective through
participation in international political events
Addressing the climate emergency means taking real action. FYEG has been present
in every UN Climate Conference since COP17, giving voice to young climate
activists. FYEG will send a delegation to the COP27, to lobby for and to
represent youth priorities at the global conference. The FYEG COP delegation
will collaborate with other stakeholders and youth representatives and
coordinate with members of the Green Family at events during and around COP27.
The COP delegation will be coordinated by one EC Member.
FYEG does not foresee a specific campaign for COP27. The COP delegation, which
will be selected via an open call by the FYEG EC, will have the chance to build
their lobbying and advocacy campaign and implement it themselves.
Disseminate our work and ideas to new and broader audiences
FYEG gives priority to extensive and effective disseminations of our actions. We
pay special attention to ensure that the results of our activities and events
are as visible as possible, which allows our partners, MOs and young activists
to derive the greatest benefit from them. Overall, we believe we reach not only
members of our member organisations but also young people from different
backgrounds and political engagements. In fact, thanks to our collaboration with
our partners and other organisations, we believe we reach beyond the European
youth.
We will continue our weekly social media analysis and present it to the FYEG
Executive Committee. The Communications Officer, the communications interns and
the Secretary General will continue to meet every week to evaluate the past week
and plan the next week. On top of this, we will organise strategic
communications meetings between the Communications Team, the Secretary General
and Spokespersons. These meetings ensure the effectiveness of our communication
as well as its timeliness in the current socio-political context. Finally we
will continue to attend the weekly communications meeting between the Green
Partners. This meeting involves the comms teams of Greens/EFA, European Green
Party, Green European Foundation and Heinrich Böll Stiftung.
In 2022 and 2023, we plan the full redesigning of our website. Designed in 2013,
FYEG’s website is outdated. A modernised website will enhance the quality of our
message and improve our outreach through a more pleasant and accessible user
experience. Through our website, social media, newsletters and through the
Ecosprinter, FYEG will share its work and political outputs to as many people as
possible. By testing and investing in new digital tools and formats, FYEG will
widen the scope and range of its communications and engage more young people to
bring forward their perspective.
The Federation’s official magazine The Ecosprinter is published and distributed
among young activists, our members and partners in online and printed form. FYEG
will support the work of the Ecosprinter Editorial Board to create relevant
content and reach its audience. We will print one issue of Ecosprinter.
Bigger representation of Young Greens in the European Parliament - The EU24
Elections Campaign
The 2024 European Union Elections are almost around the corner and they will,
therefore, become a focal point of FYEG activities for next two years. FYEG aims
at empowering young green voices to be protagonists in this election, in order
to enhance a wider young green presence in the European Parliament. For the 2024
EU elections, FYEG will work towards increasing the youth participation, both in
terms of voter turnout and in terms of young Greens running for the European
Parliament.
The EU24 Election Campaign planning started in April 2022. For the Campaign,
FYEG will be assisted by a Campaigner, who will be hired in 2023. The first
timeline and plan of the projected Campaign can be found in the Annex.
European Year of Youth
2022 is announced as the European Year of the Youth (EYY) by the European
Commission and we anticipate a lot of youth policy discussions at the Parliament
and Commission level. In 2022, we are planning to follow the youth policy
discussions very closely with our EC and Sec-Gen, contribute to these
discussions and disseminate the debates to our members across Europe.
FYEG will liaise with European and other institutional stakeholders to
contribute to the European Year of Youth. FYEG is planning to bring participants
to the events organised in the scope of EYY, specifically the planned WOW
Festival (9 May) and Youth Democracy Festival (planned for Autumn 2022).
We are also planning to run a campaign on EYY trying to directly impact topics
discussed at the political level while raising awareness and promoting Europe.
This campaign will include:
Promoting EYY activities and communications to membership base
Communicating on the EYY debates happening at the EU institutions
Social media communication on FYEG’s EYY priorities
In 2022 we would like to do a campaign on the European Year of Youth. The
Executive Committee is drafting a manifesto on the European Year of Youth,
outlining our vision for the year. We plan to communicate this vision for the
whole year via videos, social media communications, and statements. In line with
the Commission’s priorities for the EYY our communication priorities will be:
Decent, secure youth employment and minimum income
Housing for young people
Inclusion of racialised youth, gender and sexual minorities, disabled
youth, migrant youth in European politics.
Green and resilient future
Organisational Growth
FYEG’s organisational competencies lie in its core human resources: the
Executive Committee and the Secretariat. The Executive Committee (EC) is the
second highest decision-making body of FYEG, which represents the Federation
externally and acts as the main political decision making and execution
structure of the Federation.The Secretariat assists the EC and other FYEG bodies
in the implementation and development of the Federations plans and activities.
In order to have a strong network that is able to achieve all the goals outlined
above, FYEG needs durable, efficient, strategic and adequate human resources.
During the organisational change process, it became apparent that in order to
have a stable and durable human resources, FYEG needs to look at its strategy;
the decision-making processes and the well-being of the EC and the Secretariat.
Strategic Framework
FYEG needs to become more strategic in terms of its priorities and become more
selective in focus. For this reason, FYEG developed a three year strategy, as it
is outlined in the 2022-2025 Strategy. The strategy is translated into a plan of
actions and activities as seen here.
FYEG will develop a strategic framework where each activity will be matched
directly with the existing operational resources and will be supported with Key
Performance Indicators. The strategic framework will be used to monitor and
evaluate our objectives and activities. This framework will increase the
coherence of FYEG goals and activities, as well as enhance the understanding and
review of FYEG performances.
Each EC member and Staff member will have an individual plan in line with their
roles, priorities and the task division within the EC and the Secretariat. These
plans will ensure that the human resources are directed towards FYEG’s goals and
objectives in line with FYEG Strategy. It will also give a possibility to
monitor individual performances and contributions to FYEG work.
Human resources, internal management, governance processes and transfer of
knowledge
FYEG’s main operational roles are shared by the EC and Secretariat. On the one
hand, the EC has the political mandate to ensure the implementation of the GA’s
decision and to make operational decisions in between GAs. The well functioning
of the EC is, therefore, essential to the political sustainability of the
Federation. On the other hand, the FYEG Secretariat is tasked to implement most
of the federation’s work and decisions, serving the operational needs of the EC
and of the Federation as a whole. The Secretariat’s working conditions and
wellbeing are thus central to FYEG’s work.
In this perspective, FYEG is committed to improving the working conditions and
retention of its staff and Executive Committee. The realisation of this
objective is closely tied to a second objective that seeks to improve FYEG’s
internal processes and functioning. Working conditions and retention have been
sensibly improving in the last few years for both the EC and Secretariat,
largely due to the strategic focus put on this matter. FYEG wants to continue
this trend.
In order to enhance the efficiency of FYEG’s work and structures, a task
division and delegation order were created. Delegation order process organises
the EC and Secretariat decision making processes and makes them transparent,
reasonable and actionable. These documents and processes will be adapted for the
new EC mandate in order to update and improve them. They will also be evaluated
before the end of the mandate to ensure a good transfer of knowledge.
In addition, FYEG will continue to test and adopt relevant digital tools to
streamline and facilitate its work. FYEG plans for example to set-up an
accounting software for a more efficient management of its finances. And the
Secretariat will start experimenting with working time accounting to further
analyse and review their workload, as well as FYEG’s capacities.
FYEG will continue to invest in its staff well-being.For this to be possible,
FYEG will carry on and improve its fundraising efforts, necessary means for the
financial sustainability of the organisation.