It is commonly accepted that democracy, as a form of governance, enjoys high approval ratings. Nonetheless, disappointment with politics (and politicians) is evident throughout Europe. Many people, especially youth, feel powerless and cannot see a way of contributing to politics or to feel heard outside of elections. Coupled with a lack of adequate transparency and accountability, this disappointment has driven voters (especially new or soon to be voters) away from participation in politics. Thus, citizens and politicians are moving further and further apart, election turnout is falling, and fewer and fewer people are willing to become involved in the political life of the country. These tendencies, which are evident throughout Europe, have given grounds to a continent-wide rise or resurgence of extremism movements and parties, targeting primarily the vulnerable youth communities. Youth (around 16-30 years old) is a component of the most productive part of the society & is the main group that faces the societal problems that may occur. During this period, young people try to form ideas, their own political views &they are exposed to everyday incidents, which take place in the political scene. This is the most vulnerable group to extreme ideas & ideologies as they have not yet formulated concrete ideas & personalities. The tendency in Cyprus is no different to the rest of Europe. The continuously falling election turnout, especially among young people, whose apathy and disappointment prevails and the lack of trust in the democratic institutions of the country is at an all-time low: a staggering 91% of respondents to the latest Eurobarometer (Autumn 2014) does not trust political parties, while 77% does not trust the House of Representatives. These percentages are among the 5 highest in Europe. Even though extremist movements have not managed to secure strong percentages among Cypriot voters yet, the disappointment with the mainstream political parties, along with the current volatile economic climate and subsequent unemployment, decreasing societal moral values and growing number of reported incidents related to corruption makes youth vulnerable and should be given adequate tools & education in order to resist affiliating with any extremist ideologies in the future. The scope of this project is to empower young people in Cyprus by creating more opportunities for their participation and greater transparency and accountability in politics. Open Parliament Cyprus (OPC) is going to be the tool to achieve this. OPC will be a web platform that bridges the increasingly widening gap between citizens and their representatives. It will enable citizens to put public questions to their national or European MP. It will be a civic discussion forum where citizens pose direct questions to politicians to better understand their views. The purpose of OPC will be to increase accountability and transparency in politics by creating an ongoing, respectful conversation between citizens and their elected officials, one question at a time. The project objectives are to: -promote the dissemination of a promising tool for active civic engagement with an emphasis on young people-design, develop, test, optimize and evaluate an innovative web based platform for the active and effective engagement of youth in CY-introduce high level of technical innovation related to the interactive web based platform & methodology used in order for it to be developed efficiently -significantly increase the active engagement of young citizens with politics in general and Parliament in particular-demonstrate an innovative method of assessing, evaluating and operating an interactive platform -lead to concrete and practical conclusions regarding the reasons behind political apathy among young people, in Cyprus and the EU-provide insight on how this interactive engagement strategy could be applied at larger scale in other European countries after the completion of the project disseminate the project progress and findings through the World Wide Web, conferences, etc.With its effect on voters, MPs and the media, OPC will strive to increase participation in the political process and to make government more effective and citizen-friendly. It aims to increase voters’ trust in politics and in democracy, moving from a passive to an active democracy.The project brings together an organization that has already successfully developed a similar platform in their own country (VW) and the organization that was behind its technological development (CP), two important players in the field of youth at European (Cafe Babel) and national (CYC) levels and a newly created organization (MW) dedicated to the successful implementation of OPC.

"With the process of formulating a common visionary set of European Youth Goals (EYGs) through the Structured Dialogue process 2017/18 a powerful instrument has been created which enables actors in the field to direct actions and measures towards this shared goals across different policy levels, from local to European, as well as across different policy sectors, e.g. health, employment, environment. With this project ""Youth Goals Laboratory"" a consortium of National Youth Councils together with two research partners contributed to more effective youth policies at the European, national and regional level. The partners will promote the use of the EYGs in order to empower regional-national-EU level decision makers and multipliers as well as young people and youth representatives to achieve progress towards those goals. The project combines research and practical approaches at different policy levels. Thus, it goes beyond the level of implementation of the EU Youth Dialogue and explores structures and patterns behind the implementation level. Three intellectual outputs show how the search for, use and exploitation of indicators based on the Youth Goals could work. Furthermore, the EU Youth Dialogue was used as an example to show how Youth Goals can be better anchored in the work at national and regional level. In addition a new Toolbox was developed around the Youth Goals.Results of the project can be seen here: www.youth-goals.eu/lab"

The project MEDIACT is centered on the innovative combination of three thematic pillars, namely: 1) peace building and conflict transformation, 2) youth work, 3) media (mass, alternative and social media), as well as their interrelations. In practice, it aims to capacitate youth workers on utilizing media in order to foster peace in their communities and beyond, and tackle issues related to armed violence and conflict. Specifically, through the project’s scope, the consortium will focus on topics as reflective structured dialogue, media literacy, the correlation of violence, extremism, radicalization and propaganda, fake news and information warfare, censorship, hate speech, post-conflict community rapprochement. It will be implemented by seven partner organizations across four continents, who present a multitude of 1) institutional statuses (i.e. a University, a youth council, NGOs, a social enterprise, a platform of organizations, a research network), 2) levels of accessibility to media (and levels of censorship), and 3) regional or national conflict contexts (political violence, post-war reconciliation, gang guerillas, ethnical and geopolitical dispute, xenophobia-driven attacks). Under the partners’ umbrella, there will be a plethora of on-ground collaborators within and across borders, coming from all three thematic pillars including youth-led media, peace forces, the civil society, educational institutes and high-level decision-makers. All activities are based on a variety of non-formal educational methodologies, including seminars, study visits, debates, as well as a certification course on community reporting. The outline of the project extends in 21 months, and is consisted of (a) three Mobility activities for Youth Workers (Europe, Central America, Sub-Saharan Africa), (b) Online activities including OER and ICT-based training (e-learning, webinars, e-Conferences), (c) Local Activities (research focus groups), (d) the dissemination phase (social media campaigns, simulation game, local workshops).A big part of the project concerns the production of new media and innovative intellectual outputs open to the public after its end. Selectively, an e-Learning Platform hosting an e-Learning course and monthly webinars, will be developed and an e-Book will be compiled after 12-month research endeavors, containing good practices, case studies and guidelines for youth workers over the use of media as a tool for peace building and conflict transformation. Also, the partners’ will maintain strong media presence and, as by definition of media, they intend to capitalize on the projects worldwide outreach potential.

<< Objectives >>Enhance the mental health literacy of youth workersEquip youth workers to identify youth mental health distress, provide first-hand support, and refer them to specialised services if neededFoster cooperation among mental health experts, youth and youth workersShare good practice to learn from experiences in different countriesFight against the mental health stigma Foster a peer-to-peer approach to mental health Guide the adoption of measures at different levels to support youth mental heal<< Implementation >>Survey (2.1) for youth workers to identify mental health literacy levelsGuide (2.2) for youth workers on identifying youth in distress, providing first-hand support, and knowing when to refer them to specialised services4 podcasts (2.3) for youth workers produced by experts and young peopleScreening young people's mental health needs through gamification (3.1)Campaign (3.2) to reverse the mental health stigmaJoint seminar (4.3) with stakeholders. Stakeholders’ recommendations (4.4)<< Results >>YiMinds will develop resources to equip youth workers to identify youth at risk and provide first-hand support. We will consider the specific needs of more vulnerable groups (i.e. difficult family backgrounds, refugees, migrants, minorities, disabilities, etc). The involvement of young people throughout YiMinds, namely in the podcasts, mental health resilience toolkit, awareness-raising campaign, recommendations and seminar will contribute to European youth active citizenship and participation.

The proposal for this project was derived from MMH’s advocacy practice, as well as from information collected through international cooperation with other national youth councils (NYCs) gathered in the largest European platform of youth organisations - the European Youth Forum (YFJ). Therefore, this project reflected an action that aimed to respond on real needs detected in the youth sector Europe-wide, as it also presented a genuine base for a long-term strategic partnership which have ensured the exchange of practices among youth, research organisations and institutions involved in the project.The aim of the project was to initiate and develop the advocacy agenda on necessity of developing quality assurance standards of national strategic and programme documents in the field of youth. Youth organisations gathered in this partnership, with the support of the research partners, did tend to advocate together their findings and joint possitions at the EU level, but also in each of their national contexts. With joint advocacy efforts of the Better Strategies project team and the Expert group on Youth Policy (established by the YFJ, for the first time), they have contributed to more effective youth policies at the European and national level, which was an overall idea behind this project. By engaging NYCs from seven (in this project, and within YFJ even more) EU countries in this advocacy process at the EU level - organisations which represent thousands of young people all over the EU - this strategic partnership have directly influenced stimulating the active participation of young people in the EU policy making, as it provides a solid basis for further development. Project was implemented through these activities: (1) Mapping of key issues in developing and implementing youth policy strategic documents from perspective of NYCs; (2) NYC capacity building training, which have provided necessary skills and knowledge for project partners; (3) development of advocacy tool which represented recommendations towards more successful youth policy (and was communicated and advocated towards relevant stakeholders), including the inputs provided to the Resolution on youth policy standards (adopted at the Spring COMEM 2016); (4) consultations with national bodies in charge of youth, which were used to collect opinions on the recommendations stated in the advocacy paper and to secure the support of the national bodies in later stages of the process (when concrete recommendations will be implemented, especially concerning developing the next long-term youth strategy); (5) advocacy process towards the YFJ (which started its development during the capacity building training, and was done through presentations, dissemination of the project results, etc.) and which did resulted in including some of the key findings from the project in specific resolutions; (6) Follow-up meeting which served for making a proper systematic evaluation of the project and planning future actions/steps which can be organized to successfully continue efforts towards proper and relevant youth policy. Two major results were achieved by implementation of activities specified above: (R1) developed advocacy agenda on quality assurance standards of national strategic and programme documents in the field of youth which was adopted and advocated (and still going on) within a large platform of youth organisations (YFJ); (R2) capacities of national youth councils from the EU partner countries are strengthened and their representatives are now feeling more educated and encouraged in creating and monitoring their concrete national strategic and programme documents in the field of youth, with more active engagement of their respective NYCs. Project results, findings and advocacy efforts were done towards three main target groups: member organisations of the YFJ, representatives of the national bodies in charge of youth policy (inside partner countries), but also representatives in the EU and Council of Europe bodies in charge of youth.The project has strengthened and empowered representatives of the project partner organisations, as it generally has raised awareness of other YFJ member organisation on the necessity of youth advocacy within the area of policy development. Project has also raised the awareness of the representatives of bodies in charge of youth policy development on both levels (those on national and those on EU) on the necessity of more effective youth policy (but also monitoring the results). This project's work, together with the advocacy efforts of the YFJ, did surely reactivate the youth policy topic at the European level after long time and it has a potential to provide some positive changes through clear recommendations dealing with youth strategic documents.