On 12-13 November 2015, the YES Forum organised a high-level event in Brussels for its members and partners, with the theme 'European Youth Policy: A changing environment'. Its aim was to tackle the issues faced by organisations working in the changing environment of the European youth field.
The representatives of organisations working with young people with fewer opportunities engaged in an honest and mutually enriching dialogue with EU-level actors in the field of youth. During the debate with MEPs Jeroen Lenaers (EPP) and Brando Benifei (S&D), youth (un)employment, the need for strong structures in the youth field at national level, supporting young people’s active citizenship, and sharing best practices were the main discussion points.
The representatives from the Directorate General for Education and Culture (DG EAC) and the Education, Audiovisual and Culture Executive Agency (EACEA) presented relevant European programmes in the field of youth and underlined the priorities for Erasmus+ in 2016: inclusion, diversity, and recognition of youth work in promoting social inclusion, intercultural understanding, and preventing violent radicalisation.
Peter Rosseel, director of Management Consulting and Research and his colleague Daniel Akhtar held a workshop on change management, giving the participants a better understanding of how to handle organisational change in a professional manner. As Peter Rosseel mentioned, “success rate of major change projects remains at 30%” because organisations simply do not know how to react (appropriately) to it.
Furthermore, Larry Waller shared the challenges and opportunities faced by the Together Trust throughout the change process started within the organisation a couple of years ago. Pierre Baussand, the director of the Social Platform, an important EU-level advocate for organisations in the social sector, mentioned various European-wide developments in the field and possible courses of action for organisations. Finally, Lucille Rieux, from the European Youth Forum, presented the EU Youth Strategy and discussed the need for clear benchmarks and measurable instruments in order to ease the assessment of the Member States’ progress on Youth Policy.