Young Volunteers Forum - What a Fruit and How to Eat It?

The September Youth Forum was organized by the Barents Youth Council with the support of the Barents Youth Cooperation Office and the Norwegian Barents Secretariat in the Murmansk Institute of Humanities where more than 60 youngsters from Sweden, Norway, Finland and Russia got a wonderful opportunity for exchanging their knowledge and experience in different volunteers’ project realization.

As a meeting of active and creative youngsters who don’t ‘warm the bench’ doing nothing, the Forum started with some morning exercises and ‘open space’ part right after. No one knows better than youth how mutual understanding is important for further activities and fruitful discussions. So, they began with interpersonal cooperative tasks like creating an image of the Forum or collecting quotations of the participants about their targets and expectations in the Forum. Before it all of them were mixed in a special Barents ‘fruit salad’ which added some freshness to the cheerless autumn day outside.

Creative exchange continued when the participants were presenting their organizations. Each group was free to choose a presentation form. So, this part turned to be full of humor, interactive means and pure communication. ‘Red Cross’, Sochi 2014 Volunteers, Nature and Youth organizations, Murmansk Youth House activists and others shared their ideas how to make the World better.

As one of the Forum participants said:’If you want to change something in your life, don’t ask somebody to do it for you, be active, take part in life of you community!’ 

The second day of the Forum was occupied by Working Groups activity. The volunteers’ were divided into three groups: “Art and Culture”, “Environment” and “Health, social issues and human rights” where discussed actual problems of nowadays.

As a result the Forum participants got an opportunity of learning from each other together with joint problems formulation and search for their solutions. The participants left Forum with plans for cooperation and joint projects for the coming year and enthusiasm to continue their work within NGOs and voluntary organizations.

The article is prepared under the information support of Barents Youth Cooperation Office.