We just wrote an article for the blog of the EU Sustainable Energy Week #EUSEW2022! These are our key messages on “Uniting the voice of youth towards the European just transition: best practices from youth-led networks”:
📣 The ambitious youth organisations unifying the voice of young people in different sectors of the sustainability transition share some key characteristics: they are independent, represent their members towards a strong and coordinated voice of youth in EU decision-making, and maintain a strong connection with national and local realities.
📣 Youth-led networks represent, communicate, and build solutions. In a world where young people consistently fail to access the institutions, they rely on youth organisations and networks to convey their message. In short: these networks constitute an efficient bridge between citizens and institutions.
📣 We’re witnessing a dramatic lack of youth engagement in the European just (energy) transition, featured everything from ineffective public consultations to a general lack of transparency and communication (details in the article).
📣 To address the lack of youth engagement we need measure, implement, fund and monitor. We need youth of different backgrounds to be represented everywhere. We need to treat youth representatives as equals, measure how policies might affect youth, set up new funding schemes for grassroots movements & much more.
📣 The European Youth Energy Network (EYEN) has a unique role: we coordinate our members – energy-focused yourth organisations, to then advocate for the meaningful and effective inclusion of youth in the energy transition, and empower organisations. We connect by closing the gap between institutions relevant to the energy transition and energy-focused youth organisations, and we educate.
📣 Read the article for best-practices of our members!
In a world of unfair systems, multiple insecurities, lack of quality jobs and ingrained exclusion, young people are fighting for a future. Every single day. Youth-led organisation are a key part of this story.
👉 READ THE WHOLE ARTICLE:
Thank you to CINEA – the European Climate, Infrastructure and Environment Executive Agency, the managing entity behind #EUSEW2022 for making this possible and featuring us.
Greetings from just a part of EYEN! ☝️
And the good news: you can get involved!
Follow us on social media to not miss our next articles + intros into our work, and join the team of EYEN-volunteers to contribute to placing youth at the heart of the European energy transition. PS: We will open more positions soon, in the meantime shoot us a mail at info@youthenergy.eu if you have a superpower to contribute. We have big plans and we can only achieve them with a strong team of courageous creatives & communicators, clever engineers & lawyers, visionary policy freaks and cheerful team leaders 🙂