Representation - DBYN at YJF

Gabriele Giovagnoli, one of our members of the Pool of Youth Representatives, represented DBYN at the European Youth Forum.
Here you can read his testimonial of his experience:

"It's always possible to go further, no matter how small seems the step taken or how far is the goal." I deem it as one of the most important lessons I learnt from this experience at the YFJ.

During those three days, as representatives of several National Youth Councils and International Non-Governmental Youth Organizations (Wosm, Ymca, Obessu, Nayora, IFM-SEI, Iynf, Ojv, Esib, YFJ, DBYN), we've shared experiences, dreams and aims of our own projects and organisations, recognising ourselves united under the same spirit despite our operational differences.
Beginning on Friday afternoon with "getting to know" activities (both on ourselves and on the topic of the meetings) we got deeper into the core of the event, also through joint sessions with the EYF grantees, sharing our activities in the field of social inclusion, volunteering experiences, refugee-related projects.
Then we analysed the role our target groups plays within our projects, both in the making and in the implementation (especially focusing on refugees), and also the level of their participation inside the organizations (through useful tools as the 'ladder of participation'), keeping in mind and inspecting the functioning and the structure of our own organizations.
From here we moved to the "one step\steps forward" studying and debating new possible goals and strategies to adopt in order to develop the participation and the inclusion of refugees within our organisational structures and in our activities.
Eventually we closed the meeting putting into effect our work developing a personal action plan.

An opportunity I will keep in my heart and for wich I'm really grateful, thanks to it I met wonderful people, increased my links with other IYNGOs, delved into a lot of current topics under new points of view and perspectives, listened and became part of amazing and fascinating life stories!"

Gabriele Giovagnoli - TGS Salerno & representative of DBYN