The 13th edition of CGYPP was launched in Berlin!

A group of 14 new participants (13 of them arrived in Berlin, one joined online) were welcomed at the European Academy Berlin seat on Sunday May 15. The central theme of this year’s programme is “How to build resilient societies”.

Programme was launched with get to know each other activities, first workshops and a discussion with an external guest – Cara Seeberg from Volt Berlin and 365 Sherpas.

We continued on Monday with the Art of Democracy debate. Our guest speaker was Eva Bertram, Managing director of the Foundation Jeder Mensch and she introduced us their proposal on new six fundamental rights for Europe. We also focused on education in a discussion entitled “Education and training as keys to resilience: An educational governance perspective” with Lukas Graf from Hertie-School. In the evening, a debate was held at the Czech Centre, we were happy to welcome alumni of our programme from previous years. The debate was entitled “Crisis, Conflict, Change: Are Europeans Resilient?” Michelle Deutsch from Das Progressive Zentrum and Esther Nass from Consul Democracy Foundation debated with us.

The third day in Berlin started with a debate on “Opportunity-driven climate communication: sparking sustainable action“ with our guest Laura Nagel from the Institute for Advanced Sustainability Studies Potsdam. After that we moved to the EUREF campus where we took a guided tour of the innovative campus. In the afternoon, participants discussed personal views on the climate crisis with Florian Ruland from the Free University Berlin. Florian ended the discussion with a walk and a short meditation.

Participants also started working on their personal projects – a podcast. They prepared their first ideas and thought of a catchy title during a special workshop.

The last day of the first CGYPP seminar in Berlin was dedicated to the technical aspects of the podcasts – mini-projects of the participants that will be published on our channel Czech-German perspectives. The participants tried working with the soundtracks and recording their own voice. After a final summary of all the past workshops and debates as well as an evaluation of the seminar, we said goodbye for a while. We are looking forward to the next seminar in June in Prague!

The program is initiated and financed by the Czech-German Fund for the Future.