3rd YEPP Community Conference

17th - 20th June 2008

"Leading the Way - Another Europe is Possible!"

Changing Policies through Youth and Community Empowerment and Partnerships

"Leading the Way - Another Europe is Possible!"

Changing Policies through Youth and Community Empowerment and Partnerships

The 3rd YEPP Community Conference takes place during the second phase of the Youth Empowerment Partnership Programme (2007 - 2011). This advancement has seen YEPP grow, not just in terms of partners and sites, but also in terms of our expectations as to what we can achieve. Our focus is expanding from beyond establishing and nurturing sites across Europe to progressing forward, consolidating experiences and looking for new avenues of influence.

To this end the 3rd YEPP Community Conference is based around the theme "Another Europe is Possible". YEPP aims to contribute to a Europe that allows and enables its citizens, in particular young people living in disadvantaged areas, regardless of their gender, nationality, religion, ethnic group or socio-economic status - to influence decisions and engage in actions so as to take responsibility and control of their own lives in order to become active and participating members in both their own communities and society in general.

By Europe we mean much more than the political-economic entity of the European Union. For us, Europe is the world we live in. It means more than just the European Union. It starts locally with us; it is a way of life, something we do. We all come from different countries, regions and backgrounds and, therefore, have got a wealth of views and experiences which can contribute to creating a Europe we want to live in where empowerment, participation, solidarity, inclusion and equity are values as well as meaningful guidelines and results of our engagement. Europe starts at everybody's doorstep!

The 3rd YEPP Community Conference provides a forum for sharing visions and values of shaping the world in which we want to live - a Europe with us and for us. It will be a forum for debating the problems and challenges we are facing and the possibilities and the powers we have to make our visions real. The Conference aims to advance the debate on how we can strengthen our collective efforts at local, national and European levels and what policy changes are needed for leading the way towards a Europe we want to live in.

Pre-Conference meetings involving different groups of the YEPP Community will lay the ground work from which the Conference will then be able to build on. The Conference opens with a Panel Discussion questioning whether there is a Europe that is with us and for us. This will set the tone for the next 2 days as attendees develop ideas and proposals for concrete actions for their Europe for the future.

These ideas will then be explored more fully using the Open Space Technique. This will allow participants to become engaged and discuss those issues to which they are most connected.

Following on from this we will present YEPP's achievements in the Local Sites and at a Transnational Level. The Interactive Exhibition will highlight compatible initiatives from different countries in Europe, underlining their contributions to another Europe.

To conclude the Conference we will bring it all together as young people, practitioners, researchers and politicians from some YEPP Programme and Affiliate Sites, representatives of the partner foundations and public sector funders, as well as politicians from, national and European levels debate how best to influence policy in order to bring about sustainable change .

Together we will think and work together for a Europe that really is with us and for us.