Reading time: 3min
Dear Readers,
it is with pleasure, and considering our first milestone of the previous issue, that I wish to everybody a good reading: our second issue of our Magazine is now out!
I would like to thank, indeed, any of you that, reading us for the first time, has contributed to our success. The path is still long to go, but I am sure – together with my editing team – that, step by step, we will find innovative ways and good stories to reach all of you.
It is not easy, and nor to be taken for granted, to talk about “Europe” nowadays. Anywhere, we are facing worrying challenges, touched by our hands everyday. The youngest generations, to whom the Fund itself is somehow dedicated, are living a changing world, made of contradictions, political wars, inequalities, poverty, environmental challenges, lack of education, tensions among the biggest economies of our globalised system.
But we can try to change it! Offering new and innovative solutions, the Fund for Youth Employment wants to help the beneficiary countries and their partners to go beyond this social and economic impasse. Through the help and contributions of all our projects, which are showcasing their initial and ongoing activities, we would like you all to be part of our optimistic vision, to share with us the positive values overarching the scope of the Fund.
As already presented in the first issue, this Magazine wants to be the main collector of the projects’ best practices and success stories. In our first issue, we decided to be ourselves presenting the first success story: the entire Team, including the “faces of the projects”. Now that our readers start to know us better, we would like to “exploit” the space dedicated to the success stories to the selection of “interesting and real facts stories”, coming directly from our projects. This is to try to be able to represent not only the aim behind each “work site” within the different countries, but also the youth people that, in those countries, are touched by the current challenges we are trying to face all together.
For the second issue, therefore, we decided to select a “hot” story as a contribution of one of our project partners. The story, written by our friend Eglė, ‘touches’ an existing challenge, a theme of high level of importance in terms of citizenships rights (in this case, young people), but presented in a positive way, with energy and passion and made possible thanks to the received Donors’ contribution.
It is needed to state, as a matter of clarity, now and for the future, that the Fund – and so our Editorial Team – moves away from any political and ethical position: the Magazine wants to represent the voice of our projects’ people, as well as raise reflections on the questions presented, without being required to speak or act towards a specific direction or opinion.
Last but not least, I would like to introduce our second Friend: Iván Martín. Iván has showed an attentive dedication to our big aim, and for reasons related to his fields of specialisation, has analysed each project, not only with his professional skills, but especially with his warm spirit towards the main challenges encountered by the projects, each one being an important part of our new family. A “family” of project-related data is what Iván is trying to construct, but he will be the main actor in explaining to us the heart of this assumption. For sure, he will tell us more on NEET, Training, Entrepreneurship, Young Workers, engaged citizens, gender and migration issues, etc.
The challenge Iván is presenting to us is on how to construct, and constantly feed, a “decalogue” on youth employment, a baseline of the status of youth employment challenges and youth employment policies in the beneficiary countries by contextualising the contributions received from the projects promoting youth employment on the ground. We will tell you more on that through our next issues …
Leaving him the word, I wish to anyone of you a fruitful reading!
GLB
