TIRANA – The Regional Youth Cooperation Office (RYCO) signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Regional Anti-Corruption Initiative (RAI) on May 5th, 2022, at the Head Office of RYCO in Tirana, Albania, as both parties strive to strengthen the spirit of regional cooperation as two regional institutions that will commit to supporting youth cooperation, non-formal education, youth empowerment and youth participation in the region.
Regional Anti-Corruption Initiative (RAI) is an intergovernmental regional organization, that deals solely with anti-corruption issues, covering the nine-member states: Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Moldova, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Romania, and Serbia. Its mission is to lead regional cooperation to support anti-corruption efforts by providing a common platform for discussions through sharing knowledge and best practices.
During the signing ceremony, the Secretary General of RYCO, Mr. Albert Hani said he was glad for this cooperation being established with RAI as he looks forward to starting discussing concrete steps together and jointly identifying and creating opportunities to develop and implement joint actions, projects, and programs targeting youth.
“We are looking for new initiatives that offer long-term solutions, such as project ideas that will bring about long-lasting changes in the societies involved. RYCO is an active regional mechanism with a mandate to listen to the concerns of youth and create policies that approach such issues,” said Mr. Hani.
While the RAI Head of Sekretariat, Ms. Desislava Gotskova emphasized further that this memorandum is just the first step of many initiatives RYCO and RAI will undertake together.
“We are open to working with youth organizations and now with the signing of this MoU with you, we can cooperate together by coordinating different projects over a common interest,” added Ms. Gotskova.
While the Chief Program and Communications Officer of RAI, Ms. Jasna Panjeta underlined the importance of working with RYCO as she said that the cooperation with RYCO gives them more structured access to the vulnerable population that is exposed to corruption and that there is little they can do to get engaged in advocacy or lobbying, so for us,