Networks of Mediterranean Youth (NET-MED Youth)
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NET-MED Youth empowers young women and men to be full participants in building their communities and to be agents of positive transformations in their region.
WHAT IS IT ABOUT?
The Networks of Mediterranean Youth programme (NET-MED Youth) builds capacities of youth and promotes their active engagement in the development and implementation of national policies and strategies on youth. By increasing youth participation, NET-MED Youth mainstreams youth issues and priorities across national decision and policy-making in 10 southern European neighbourhood countries to improve the situation of young people.
"NET-MED Youth is a way to strengthen my conviction that youth have a key role to play in civil society."
-Chakir, Member of NET-MED Youth in Morocco
In brief, this is how they do things...
1. Youth Organizations Mapping
Youth members take it into their own hands to develop a comprehensive, online and regional directory of youth organizations. For each country where NET-MED Youth operates, the directories identify and include all relevant information about registered youth organizations: profiles, areas of work, emerging skills, experience, opportunities, challenges, sources of funding, and more.
2. Youth Policy
NET-MED Youth builds the capacities of young women and men in order to empower them to participate in revising national legislation on youth, to advocate for the development of national youth strategies and policies and to lobby for the sound implementation of these. The pogram supports the role of youth organizations as monitoring entities that work towards improving the design, implementation and evaluation mechanisms (access, effectiveness, efficiency and equity) of policies, strategies and programmes addressing youth skill development needs and labor market transitions.
3. Youth and Media
NET-MED Youth has developed different activities to monitor youth representation in media and survey youth opinion about it. The program carries out outreach actions fostering youth-friendly, inclusive, objective and fair media coverage; trainings and resource dissemination to promote freedom of expression, media and information literacy, and youth-generated media content; and capacity building programs for young journalists, bloggers and citizen journalists.
4. Youth and Employment
NET-MED Youth works towards increasing youth’s participation and role in national dialogue on current and future challenges with unemployment and skills needs. Together with employment experts, national stakeholders and youth organizations, we analyze the employment barriers and assess the skills needed for the future. The program produces reports on the labor market, youth transition and data availability. It also develop tools for skills anticipation, and is currently setting up National Teams in each country, to monitor and discuss the results achieved with institutional stakeholders. Workshops empower youth to voice their concerns about skills and employment, and the program carries out advocacy campaigns so businesses can be youth-friendly.
Countries with NET-MED Youth activities:
Algeria, Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, Libya, Morocco, Palestine, Syria, Tunisia.
Timeline
2014 - 2017
THE SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT GOALS
NET-MED Youth contributes to:
- SDG 4 Quality Education and SDG 8 Decent Work and Economic Growth, by focusing on improving young people's access to the training and education necessary to improve their opportunities in the labour market. This includes skills and media trainings, and opportunities for youth organizations, employment experts and different stakeholders to engage in dialogue and work together on unemployment solutions.
- SDG 5 Gender equality, by ensuring all trainings and workshops are gender-balanced and gender-sensitive. Women represent 50% of the NET-MED Youth participants.
- SDG 10 Reduced inequalities, by making the programme inclusive. Particular emphasis is placed on encouraging young people with disabilities and those from marginalized communities to participate in the debate.
- SDG 16 Peace, justice and strong institutions, by empowering youth to participate in the communcal and national development, revision and implementation of national youth strategies and policies.
Funding
This project is funded by the European Union's Directorate-General for European Neighbourhood Policy and Enlargement Negotitations (DG NEAR).
Additional resources:
NEWS AND REPORTS
Regional synthesis report on skills forecasting in the Mediterranean region
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