UfM meets with 20 young civil society leaders from 12 Euro-Mediterranean countries

Barcelona, 30^th August 2012. The UfM’s Social and Civil Affairs Division met with 20 young civil society leaders from 12 Euro-Mediterranean countries taking part in a one-week international training of trainers, organized by the Barcelona-based Fundació Catalunya Voluntària, a private foundation working with young Catalan volunteers in different social projects.Deputy Secretary General Attard-Pirotta informed them of the Euro-Mediterranean Partnership’s historic development, starting from the Barcelona Process, the launching of the Union for the Mediterranean and concluding with the current state-of-play in the region. The participants were familiarized with the Partnership’s founding documents, the Paris and Marseille Declarations, as well as with the mission, structure and activities of the UfM Secretariat. DSG Attard-Pirotta highlighted the project cycle, the cooperation with civil society organizations as projects’ promoters, and the challenges related to fundraising for the labelled projects.

The meeting provided the UfM with a valuable insight into the degree of knowledge of young civil society leaders from the region about its mission and potential. Fully aware of these young activists’ extraordinary abilities to mobilize their national organizations in the Euro-Mediterranean direction, the Social and Civil Affairs Division stands ready to establish contacts with new civil society players in the region.

This one-week session gathered leading young activists from Egypt, Tunisia, Morocco, Algeria, Jordan, Bulgaria, Romania, Portugal, the Netherlands, Germany and Spain. A visit to the Secretariat of the Union for the Mediterranean complemented the session’s agenda.