On Thursday, June 9 started the second Czech-Germans Young Professionals Program (CGYPP) seminar of the year 2022. This time we met all the 14 participants in Prague. For the first time since March 2020, we had all attendees at the seminar and no one was connected online!

The prepared programme included a number of discussions, but also workshops with interactive activities. It was the diversity of the prepared programme that was appreciated by the participants, as one of them summarized, “We had the opportunity to learn about diverse topics, the atmosphere in the group was very nice and the organisation worked very smoothly.”

The group was welcomed in Prague by Michael Murad and Václav Bacovský from Association for International Affairs and Carlotta During from European Academy Berlin. After the opening remarks from representatives of the CGYPP partners – Stefan Gehrke from the Czech-German Fund for the Future and Markus Ehm from the Hanns Seidel Stiftung the first guest was Tereza Bartoníčková. Tereza is the director of Internetový institut (Internet institute) and we have discussed the impact of digitalization and the use of information technologies on our society.

The second day of the Prague seminar started at the Ministry of Defence of the Czech Republic,
where we were hosted by Tomáš Kopečný, Deputy Minister for Defence Industrial Cooperation. We discussed the military aspect of the war in Ukraine. Friday afternoon was dedicated to fact-finding missions.

Each of the three groups of participants went to a different location in Prague and discussed a slightly different topic – urban planning (at the Center for Architecture and Metropolitan Planning), resilience to hybrid threats (at the Centre Against Terrorism and Hybrid Threats) and building the active reserve of the Army of the Czech Republic (with Ludvík Cimburek, advisor to the Czech Army General Staff). Afterwards, we got together and shared what new knowledge we had learned through the mission. Also, we announced the winner of the photo contest that was running during the mission. A Pecha-Kucha session closed on the second day of the Prague seminar. Participants shared with us their personal insights and experiences on the topic of resilience.

Saturday´s programme of the seminar in Prague was devoted mainly to discussions with interesting guests. The first was Helena Truchlá, journalist and political scientist from České zájmy v EU (Czech interests) in the EU and Aktuálně.cz with whom we discussed the popularity of NATO and EU membership in Czech society. Alice Rezková as a second guest speaker and the Co-founder of the Czech-Taiwanese Business Chamber focused on international trade relations and European dependence on China. The third guest of the day was the director of The Herzl Center for Israel Studies at Charles University Prague Irena Kalhousová with whom we discussed the resilience of Israeli society. Saturday´s programme was rounded off with a workshop led by Jaime Freeman from the Martial Arts Academy Prague. On Sunday we spent time with the podcasts workshop and also evaluating of the seminar.

The next seminar will take place after the summer break in September in Liberec, North Bohemia. In the meantime, participants and alumni participants will meet for a volunteer weekend and also work
on preparing their podcasts.

CGYPP is initiated and financed by the Czech-German Fund for the Future. The seminar was organized with the support of the Hanns-Seidel-Stiftung