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Guidelines of the contest: Diversity, Participation, Human Rights

Context and motivation

The idea of Summerweek came from contact - making seminar of religious (Muslim, Jewish, Christian) youth organisations. The meeting took place in May 2005, Warsaw, Poland as a conference that was relevant to the Council of Europe Head of States meeting. This informal group (participants of seminar) got the input as an expert group to the Youth Summit meeting in Warsaw. One of the outcomes from our previous activities is a strong need of the inter - religious dialogue for the peace among young people. Through the meeting of young representatives of three big religions, we’d like to show how this dialogue is needed in today’s Europe. The role of youth faith-based NGOs is to prepare youth to the role of constructors of peace bridges and mutual understanding in their local communities. In the light of last religious based conflicts, we found the importance  to enable members of our movements to meet, get to know, integrate and to create methods of collaboration for the peace.

The League for Intercultural Cooperation (LIC) has launched a “Media Tolerance Monitoring” program to observe the covering of inter-religious and inter-ethnic relations in Azerbaijani media. In the frame of the project, the LIC will monitor 8 newspapers: Azadlig, Ekho, Khalg Gazeti, Uch Nogta, Yeni Azerbaijan, Yeni Musavat, Zerkalo, and 525-ci Gazet from August till October 2006. Six of them are in Azerbaijani and two are in Russian. One of them is governmental, three are edited by political parties, and four are independent.

We refer not only to the activists and the leaders of youth organizations (antifascist, civil or human rights), but to the common dwellers of Eastern and Western Europe, Russia and all the CIS countries – to all people who on their way to school or work, to shop or club come across hate symbols on the walls and fences of your cities and towns (swastika, SS-symbole, runes and etc). These symbols promote violence and intolerance as due methods to solve the recent problems of society.

The International Session in Kyiv will focus on Human Rights violations in the past and present of Europe. Totalitarianism, wars and violations of human rights are no unknown concepts on the European continent. Regularly, Europe has been the victim of such crimes. The new generation of Europeans tends to lower their interest for these issues, since they rarely experienced them themselves.

This project, organised by Rural Youth Europe, is meant to show rural youth who hope to move to an urban environment exactly what that urban environment might be like. This will in turn challenge stereotypes of both urban and rural life, and help to raise awareness of the brain-drain in rural environments. As they encourage people of all cultures and backgrounds to be proud of their roots and re

Ecumenical Youth Council in Europe hopes to provide sustainable ideas and help to youth and youth NGOs in a vulnerable position during the transition into a democratic society. In particular, this seminar hopes to focus on:
The challenges youth NGOs face in countries currently transitioning to democracy
Ideas on how youth organisations can contribute to boost active citizenship
Empowering youth leaders to be active as multipliers in strengthening European citizenship.

The project is organised by Young European Federalists and focuses on the concept of participation as a political tool to reform the society in Europe. Specific goals are to:
Work on the concepts of participation and politics;
Empower the participants (young people) with practical experience on how to activate people and involve them in civil society;
Train participants on examples of toleranc