Over 8,000 young people gathered in Strasbourg, France, from 1st to 2nd June to share ideas and debate at the Parliament's third European Youth Event.
The European Parliament, the heart of Europe’s democracy, opened its doors to young people from all over Europe and beyond giving them the chance to engage in 400 activities, debates, performances and workshops at Parliament’s premises and outside at the YoFest activities. Eurodesk network was present with a delegation of 45 participants (national partners, multipliers and young people) coming from 10 different countries: France, Spain, Germany, Italy, The Netherlands, Ireland, United Kingdom, Turkey, Sweden and Iceland. Eurodesk proposed 2 activities to the participants of the EYE18.
The first one, Human Library of mobility opportunities (held on Friday and twice on Saturday), allowed participants to meet “Eurodesk Books”, read their stories and learn how to find the best mobility opportunity. The Eurodesk “Human Library” was a place where questions were expected, appreciated and answered.
On the “Human library”, visitors (young people and adults) had the possibility to browse the Eurodesk catalogue of titles, select the book they were interested in, borrow it and return it after reading it. The books were real people and the reading consisted in listening to a story and engaging in a live conversation with the author about its content: youth exchanges, volunteering activities, youth participation, internships, working abroad. The aim was to raise awareness about the mobility projects available for young people and to stimulate the creativity of young people by supporting them in taking part in a learning mobility opportunity, thereby reinforcing the intercultural dialogue and the exchange of experiences. A librarian showed participants the catalogue with the living books available. The activity lasted 90 minutes, giving participants the chance to read up to 6 books, 15 minutes each. Some readers decided to spend a longer time with the chosen book and then move to another one.
Participants appreciated the peer to peer approach of the workshop, which provided them a genuine discussion from a wide variety of participants who could witness and talk about their personal experience.
The second activity, “Youth values” (held on Saturday), allowed over 45 participants to take part in the Eurodesk game on European values by building a storyline, challenging themselves to create a mime and help the other group discover the value behind it. “Youth values” aimed at raising awareness about European values and how they link with real life situations. It also aimed at stimulating the creativity of young people by supporting them in designing a story and miming it. The facilitator asked participants which, in their opinion, were the European values and invited them to share ideas around them. How are these related to the official EU Values: Human dignity, Freedom, Democracy, Equality, Rule of law and Human rights?
Afterwards participants, divided in 6 groups, picked a value and imagined a real-life situation that evidences the chosen European value. They then created a story line to mime their story to the other groups, so that they could discover the situation and the value behind it.
Both activities have been very successful and appreciated by the participants.
