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On 27th and 28th January of this new year, CEDAG and the partners of the project “Young Citizens in Action” organised their kick-off meeting in Vilnius, Lithuania.This 18 months European project will be run in the framework of the European Commission’s DG JLS with the main aim of combating racism, xenophobia and discrimination in our partners countries,
i.e Slovenia, Belgium and Lithuania, by actively involving young citizens from different countries (EU and non-EU) in dynamic and proactive workshops which will be organised around the thematics of Fundamental Rights and Citizenship”.
Immigration issues are at the heart of the European political and legal discussions, and generate strong social and economic developments and debates among societies. Some countries such as Belgium have a long immigration tradition and history and welcome people coming from the most various worldwide communities (Morroco, Brazil, Portugal, Italy, Turkey, Romania, Poland, The Netherlands, etc) and this already for decades.
Slovenia, on its turn, represents another very diverse context, with a predominant number of ex Yougoslavian countries nationals.
But Lithuania, one of our project partner country, for example, has a very different immigration reality.
In order to better understand the Lithuanian situation about immigration and connected issues, our partner based in this country (NISC), arranged an interesting encounter with representatives of the Migration Board of Vilnius county Police Headquarters, the ONU International migration office and the Centre for the Promotion of migrants equality in Lithuania.
In this country, where more than 80% of the population of the country is Lithuanian, the most represented communities come from ex-Soviet countries or from Russia.
While immigrants coming from Belarus or Poland are well integrated into the Lithuanian society and they feel as belonging to this culture and often have Lithuanian nationality, other communities such as the Roma one still live in the territory being very often discriminated and marginalised.
With a so diverse and amazing panel of cultures and customs, CEDAG (Project leader), NISC (Lithuania), Pour La Solidarité (Belgium) and CNVOS (Slovenia) showed their willingness to help solving misunderstandings, intolerance and ignorance by reaching young people and gathering them in a same place to encourage them being key actors and not only key targets of the project’s purposes.
These young citizens will be asked to produce artistic tools, and to raise a campaign on the fundamental rights where their creations will be publicly exhibited in each of our partners countries.
To read more about the project and follow its evolutions, follow the link (Page under construction): http://www.cedag-eu.org/index.php?page=young-citizens-in-action&hl=en_US |
