MEDITERRANEAN YOUTH COUNCIL
The Mediterranean Youth Council is an assembly of 30 young Mediterraneans committed to the co-construction of a model of youth representative body at the Mediterranean level.
The Mediterranean Youth Council is made up of young and dynamic people from all over the Mediterranean region, from Kosovo to Greece, Lebanon, Algeria, Tunisia, Morocco, Egypt, Syria, Türkiye, Albania, Spain, Italy and France. For us, the Mediterranean Youth Council is an opportunity to make our ideas heard, to pass on messages through common actions but also to engage in a dialogue with local, regional and national authorities in our respective countries. The Mediterranean Youth Council is coordinated by the association Les Têtes de l’Art, and co-managed by the Conference of Peripheral Regions Maritimes (CPMR), the Provence Alpes Côtes d’Azur region, the Lazio region, and the Foundation Assembly of Citizens of the Mediterranean (FACM), with the support of EuroMed France and the European Association for Local Democracy (ALDA).
The MYC was officially installed on February 7th as part of the Forum for the Mediterranean Worlds which took place in Marseille on February 7th and 8th.
The council is constituted by around 30 young and diverse people from all regions of the Mediterranean (whether they have a border or not with the sea, regions that feel culturally Mediterranean) who share a common goal, based on a regional, multicultural and multi- linguistic approach.
We see ourselves as active citizens of the Mediterranean.
We have found a common interest in the Mediterranean but we also embrace our differences, which empowers us to debate and overcome them in a positive way. For us diversity is richness, and not a problem to be overcome.
AJCM ( http://ajcmed.org/) : the starting point of the MYC.
The workshop of young citizens of the Mediterranean (AJCM) is a network that offers a space for dialogue and citizen cooperation to Mediterranean youth in more than 14 countries, through workshops, talk shows, digital, transnational and local actions around the themes of the environment, equal opportunities and mobility.
The AJCM is also a group of movements, associations and public entities that share the same objective: to promote citizen involvement in the Mediterranean.
These spaces for interaction and dialogue have enabled joint decisions to be made and actions to be prepared collectively around shared issues and values.
The AJCM Festival is a flagship event of this network. This year, it has been revamped to become the Med'Action Festival: a week of actions in more than 14 territories, simultaneously and online.
More recently, in 2021, the Mediterranean Youth Council was built on the basis of the AJCM and CIM-CRPM network and is supported by the South Region, the Lazio Region and Euro-Mediterranean networks such as the Anna Lindh Foundation, ALDA, the Foundation and Assembly of Mediterranean Citizens and the Ref.
The objective was to create a space that young mediterranean people can build and shape as they want to represent the Mediterranean Youth and raise their voice, through actions and advocacy.
The main objectives of the Mediterranean Youth Council are:
-to create a space for transnational dialogue for young people to install a dialogue with local, regional authorities and international bodies acting in the Mediterranean
-to detect and make concrete proposals for actions that have an impact on issues common to Inter- mediterranean territories by working in thematic groups