On 30th November 2020, the ChYResilience project held the Kick-off meeting online. The aim of the project is to map youth participation in resilience building in the Baltic Sea Region. Through the project three focus group discussions will be organised with children and youth, in Warsaw, Riga, and Tallinn. The focus groups will be organised together with project partners. The idea is to formulate a set of good practices on how to engage children and youth in resilience building.
Janusz Gąciarz, Senior Adviser for Civil Security at CBSS, together with Katie Goldie-Ryder, Project Coordinator for Civil Security at CBSS, welcomed the participants and highlighted the importance of the project and of youth participant in the Baltic Sea region. The agenda included a very appreciated presentation from Kaspars Varpins, Chairman of the Union of the Baltic Cities Safe Cities Commission, on the results from the CBSS Project Support Facility funded project ‘Youth for Safer Youth’. The project brought together safety experts and youth, from Finland, Latvia, and Lithuania, to explore the safety concerns of youth and the best ways to reach them in the Baltic Sea Region.
Additionally, the Children at Risk Unit, CBSS Secretariat, shared the on the importance of Child Safeguarding Policies when working with children and the partners enthusiastically support a Safeguarding Policy for the project.
The partners also participated in workshops on youth participation strategies as well as project communication. The partners provided key insights for the development of the research framework and identifying good practices that will inform the focus group consultations.
The meeting rounded off with a tour de table with all project partners, who all shared their inputs on both the kick-off and the project in general. In ChYResilience, the project partners are:
You can read more about their missions and how they involve children and youth in their work here.
The project is funded by the Swedish Institute’s Seed Fund.