11 November 2022
On November 8, 2022, in the Ribnjak Youth Center, the Youth Initiative for Human Rights, Gong, CK13, and Danes is a New Day successfully held a Conference on opportunities for youth activism through participation, creativity, and advocacy.
At 10 am, Dorothea Strelec from the Youth Initiative for Human Rights gave the conference's opening speech. The POJAM project, which produced the booklets Practical guide for working with young people and Public policies and how to deal with them as well as the video game Stop Your Government, was presented to the audience, which included young people and members of youth organizations.
Nina Ciganović, a social activist from Novi Sad, and Ana Gvozdić, a representative of the Youth Initiative for Human Rights, participated in the first panel, Innovative practices of social activism and advocacy at the local level, which was moderated by Branka Vierda from YIHR. The panel examined exemplary local projects that promote human rights and peace activism.
Ana introduced the publication Inclusive memory: Recommendations for the commemoration of civilian victims of war for representatives of local and regional self-government in the Republic of Croatia, using this example to introduce young people to the advocacy activities of civil society organizations directed at local self-government units. Nina spoke about activist actions and the current socio political situation in Serbia. In order to achieve transitional and climate justice, shared approaches for collaboration in several human rights domains were called into question. Already at the first panel, young people showed great interest in the presentation of the topic and were actively involved by asking numerous questions from the audience.
Young people as decision makers: reality or myth? was the topic of the second panel, which was moderated by Dorotea Strelec from the Initiative. Participants included Mirta Čenić and Ivana Badek, undergraduate and graduate students in the Faculty of Political Sciences, Matea Marić, an employee of the IKS association, and the winner of the City of Vardin's youth participation budget election, Tim Hrvaćanin.
Mirta and Ivana presented the student paper 'When everyone steals, why shouldn't we?: Corruption and its connection with institutional trust and political participation of young people', awarded the Rector's Award for the academic year 2021/2022. They were mentored by doc. dr. sc. Kosta Bovan and wrote the paper together with four other colleagues: Bruno Aleksić, Nikolina Bralić, Adriano Roka Kujundžić and Antonija Majdančić. Panelist Matea told the audience a little more about perseverance and a two-year process that included advocacy efforts, numerous administrative procedures, and the launch and management of a crowdfunding campaign to open a Social and Cultural Center in Petrinja, as well as the desire to soon build SCCs in other cities across Croatia.
Tim introduced the community radio format to the audience and explained how this idea was launched in Varaždin back in 2018, when local youth gathered in the Independent Youth Platform and members of the Varaždin Youth Council worked on preparations for Varaždin's candidacy for the European Youth Capital, but the realization itself was made possible only this year when the city held an election for the best project proposals of young people, as part of the pilot project - participatory budgeting for young people, where young people chose those projects that they consider necessary and useful in their community. Several questions were asked from the audience at the end of the panel, and interested young people continued their conversations with the panelists during a break for networking.
The last activity at the conference was of a creative nature and was held by Zorana Unković, an academic painter and art teacher. At this workshop, participants were introduced to examples of graffiti and murals in public spaces that promote messages of hatred, intolerance or discrimination, and then created creative solutions themselves with the aim of suppressing hate speech in public spaces.
The conference received a fantastic response, and more seats were sought right away. Young people and representatives of youth organizations and associations came from all over Croatia, not just Zagreb and the surrounding areas. Half of the participants came from Vukovar, Osijek, Zadar, and Split, while others came from smaller communities like Virovitica, Križevci, Ogulin, Gospić, and Metković. We also hosted visitors from Serbia and other nations.
The organization of all the mentioned events was created within the framework of the project "POJAM - Partnership for strengthening sustainable youth activism" jointly implemented by the Youth Initiative for Human Rights - Croatia, Gong from Zagreb, Danes je nov dan from Slovenia and the CK13 Youth Center, financed by the Erasmus+ program.
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