”Rock, paper, participation” – an annual work plan co-funded by the European Youth Foundation of the Council of Europe and the European Union.
In 2020 MIJARC Europe will focus on seeing-judging-acting on how young people get involved in the dialogue on agricultural policies and on how they take part to sustainable agricultural practices.
Following the successful implementation of the work plan on citizenship and participation in 2019, MIJARC Europe has chosen to go deeper into the topic and build on the great results it has achieved so far, by focusing on increasing youth participation in building a sustainable future for agriculture and for rural communities. Agriculture is a key topic of MIJARC Europe and a strategic area of intervention when it comes to youth participation. Rural development and a prosperous, sustainable future for young people in rural areas are interlinked to agriculture. In 2017 official data revealed that Europe’s farming sector was dominated by an older population, especially in the case of women farmers – data showed that just 4.9% of farmers under 35 were women, compared to 6.4% for men. Even less were engaged in policy dialogue. We need to get young people from rural areas back at the dialogue table, we need to provide them with the skills and insight needed to understand what sustainable agriculture is and to give them a strong, informed and evidence-based voice in agricultural policies.
Listen to 32nd episode of our podcast “How about you(th)” to find out more about what sustainability means for agriculture.
Through this work plan we strive to provide the rural young people in the MIJARC Europe network with the values, attitudes, skills, knowledge and critical understanding required for meaningful participation and effective engagement in decision-making and policy development about sustainable agriculture.
We plan to achieve this aim by engaging the young people in a learning process which is based on the principles and instruments of the Revised European Charter on the Participation of Young People in Local and Regional Life and the methodology of youth participatory projects described in the ‘Have your say’ manual.
The three phases of the work plan bring young people closer to farmers, sustainable agriculture initiatives and agricultural policies and uses a bottom-up approach. During the local visits/national webinars young people focus on the priorities they feel should be pursued in their community in order to increase young people’s involvement in agriculture, while the seminar and the summer camp teach them to understand and work on agricultural policies and to develop concrete projects at community level to address the priorities identified.
The local visits are planned to take plan between March-May 2020 but following the mobility restrictions imposed by the current global pandemic, the local visits will be organised as webinars.
The seminar and the summer camp are postpone to autumn 2020 with updates to be published at the beginning of August 2020.