BELGRADE – Our colleagues from the RYCO Local Branch Office in Serbia hosted the “2nd Meeting of the Umbrella Youth Organizations from the Western Balkans” in Belgrade from 5 to 7 November 2021. This event was organized to facilitate better collaboration of the Umbrella Youth Organizations (UYO) from the Western Balkans among them as well as with RYCO, in line with RYCO’s mission to foster regional cooperation.
Considering the great commitment to supporting other actors in regional collaboration shown by RYCO in the past, the focus of the meeting was to explore prospects for involvement of UYOs at the regional level and how can RYCO facilitate this collaboration and examine possibilities for closer cooperation of UYOs and its local branches in the region. Lastly, this meeting was used to gather inputs from UYOs for the strategy development process of RYCO.
Besides the representatives of the Umbrella Youth Organizations and the Heads of Local Branch Offices of the RYCO, the meeting was attended by the Youth Representatives in the RYCO Governing Board, who had the opportunity to get closer insights on the progress of regional cooperation of umbrella bodies from the Western Balkans, but also discuss among themselves plans for the upcoming period in dedicated separate sessions.
The focus of the second meeting of the UYO was on summarizing what has been done so far considering the regional cooperation among them as key actors, operationalization of the next steps, establishing efficient communication and crisis management tools for the future, defining fundraising and opportunities for joint action, as well as planning of next steps and the next regional meeting.
The last day of the event was dedicated to consultations with the UYOs in the process of development of the RYCO Strategy 2022-2024, with the aim to gather inputs from all UYOs in the region for the RYCO’s strategy development process.
The second meeting of the Umbrella Youth Organizations was organized in cooperation with the National Youth Council of Serbia (Krovna organizacija mladih Srbije – KOMS) and is part of a series of planned regional meetings among these youth actors, following previous gatherings within the framework of the Western Balkans Youth Lab Project (WBYL) in 2021.