Structured Dialogue champions – what’s it all about?
The UK Young Ambassadors are very excited to announce an amazing opportunity for young people aged 16-25 to be a part of the UKYA project. The Ambassadors for Structured Dialogue and European Policy are recruiting a team of approximately 15 Structured Dialogue Champions over the next fortnight from all over the UK, to support their work over the next 18 months.
The UKYAs are holding a UK wide consultation as part of the European Structured Dialogue on Youth, meaning they are feeding back the views of young people in the UK to European decision makers. The ambassadors will be attending a number of EU Youth Conferences, where they will be meeting with their equivalents from all countries in the EU, and discussing the theme of this dialogue cycle, The Future of Young People in Europe. Each country’s representatives then return to their home countries, where they will hold a massive consultation, distributing surveys, running workshops, and gathering the thoughts and opinions of as many young people as possible. All the countries will then meet, and formulate a list of recommendations based on what they have found, which will then be submitted to the European Commission, and hopefully can shape European policy making on Youth.
This is where you come in, although our three Young Ambassadors are very passionate about their work, they cannot hope to access young people from all over the UK without support. We need a group of driven, enthusiastic Champions based around the UK who can bring the work of the UKYA project into their local communities. We are looking for Champions who can reach out to as many young people as possible, and who can do this in innovative ways. This could involve a social media campaign, speaking in local schools or universities, reaching out to other organisations that are holding events to ask to run a workshop, setting up your own independent event, or anything else you can think of.
The information and feedback that you gather from your workshops and consultations will then be fed into the UKYAs Structured Dialogue report, which they will take with them to a European Youth Conference, and will inform the recommendations that are made, and submitted to the European Commission. This gives you a unique opportunity to be a part of the process of EU decision making, and contribute to the conversation on the Future of Young People in Europe, at what is a vital and important time of change. This is an excellent opportunity for young people that are passionate about current affairs and EU decision making, and can provide useful independent research experience, as well as offering a unique and valuable point to build a CV.
We are so excited to hear from applicants for this role, and are looking forward to meeting the new team of Structured Dialogue Champions, and working with them in the future!
Bronagh Hughes
