During the weekend of 11th to 14th of April, we took our project to Brussels and took part in two amazing events, together with over 1000 young people from countries across Europe and beyond! We started with a kick-off event of the European Youth Week, an initiative of the European Commission, and then the LevelUp! event organised by the European Youth Forum.
Under the slogan “Voice your vision”, the European Commission brought together hundreds of young people, most of them volunteers and members of youth-led organisations, in the Hemicycle of the European Parliament in Brussels. As every two years, the event celebrates engagement, participation and active citizenship among young people, we had to be there!
The event was full of engaging sessions where we had the opportunity to exchange ideas with other like-minded youth and hear from members of similar initiatives such as ours. If you were there and passed by the AEGEE’s stand at the Marketplace, then you also had the chance to get one of our postcards and learn more about our project.
And the main reason we were there? We ended the day by organising a Human Library event, where we introduced the participants to our campaign and brought together 3 young people who are drivers of change in their community. Two of them helped us launch this edition of Y Vote, and the reunion was even more special as we brought together Y Vote to the European Parliament. Teodora (President of the National Youth Council of Moldova), Stanislava (member of the Advisory Council on Youth of the Council of Europe) and Andreas (Vice-President of the National Youth Forum in Bulgaria) are all young activists who have been advocating for policy changes and strived to bring Europe closer to youth in their countries and beyond. During our event, they shared their story and inspired others to organise civic engagement activities and to #UsetheirVote in the 2024 European Elections.
In another building of the European Quarter, our team has also joined the LevelUp! event. LevelUp! was a great opportunity to experience the spirit of youth around the upcoming elections. With more than a thousand people from all around Europe, we had the pleasure to sit, vote and experience the atmosphere in the Hemicycle where we had our opening and closing ceremonies.
Our members also took part in a wide range of workshops. Some of us learned more about voting in the elections e.g. how to find misleading content in the news and why our opinion and vote matter. Others took part in workshops devoted to climate actions, EU enlargement, exploring our rights, AI and sessions about the journey of becoming more politically active. Soon we will share all this knowledge with our followers with even more engaging content in our campaign, so stay tuned!
Apart from learning a lot, we also loved meeting all these amazing people from across Europe. We realised how important it is to mobilise and get involved in civic engagement activities while sharing stories and listening to inspiring climate activists, future politicians and youth who want to bring a change in their communities! We also celebrated a birthday, had some nice time together and even met one of the founders of Y Vote, while meeting old friends and making new ones. And while we are getting closer to the 2024 European Elections and launching some exciting activities of our project, we want to deeply thank all of the organisers and participants for creating these incredible events!
See you next year or maybe earlier, somewhere in Europe!
Joanna is a Polish student, studying International Relations in Kraków. She joined AEGEE Kraków to become more connected to Europe, travel, meet interesting people, understand and learn more. This association allowed her to do all these things and in 2023 she was happy to join the Y Vote project as a PR & Comms Team member. Unfortunately, she didn’t vote in the past elections because of her age but she’ll vote in the elections in 2024. Joanna decided to join Y Vote to help young people learn more about the EU and inform them about the importance of their vote because she sees how crucial it is to appreciate all the ‘benefits’ of living in an EU country.
Florina is originally from Romania and holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Law, a Master’s Degree in European Studies, and an Erasmus Mundus MA in Human Rights Policy and Practice. She voted for the first time in the European Elections in 2014. In 2019, while she was an Erasmus+ exchange student in Prague, she waited 7 hours in line to vote at the Embassy of Romania. She was impressed back then by the commitment of hundreds of people to wait for hours to vote for the European Elections. She joined AEGEE in October 2018 and one week later, she participated as a helper in her first-ever event, the Y Vote Convention in Cluj-Napoca. She believes Y Vote is the reason why she remained in the organization and years later, she is now committed to giving something back to the project that made her fall in love with AEGEE.