The 15th annual program edition was met with great interest among applicants. A carefully selected 14 participants from both countries met in Berlin for the first CGYPP 2024 event last week (April 12 – 14, 2024). This year topic Czechia and Germany – Ready to Face Tomorrow’s Challenges Together? will be explored during the three seminars.
The first day in Berlin was dedicated to expectations, getting to know each other and also to the first thematic discussion – Focus on democracy: EU elections and shared values across borders with Luise Quaritsch from the Jaques Delors Centre. During the interactive discussion, we focused on the challenges liberal democracies are facing, especially in the context of the upcoming European Parliament elections. The European elections 2024, as well as other elections that are taking place in this “super election year” will be a topic that we will return to during the next activities of the program throughout the year.
We opened the second day with a discussion Democracy 2.0.: The role of digitalization in citizen participation with Carolin Klingsporn, Project Manager „meinBerlin“, Liquid Democracy e.V. During this discussion, we focused on how to use modern online tools to increase civic engagement, especially at the local level.
A visit to the EUREF Campus Berlin marked the beginning of the afternoon programme. Under the title Shaping the future with responsibility: the EUREF-Campus’ Contribution to Sustainable Governance in Energy and Mobility Sectors, a tour of the entire campus was conducted with a focus on putting modern technologies towards greater sustainability into practice. We then moved on to the Kreuzberg district, where Creative Sustainability Tours Berlin introduced us to interesting projects dealing with current challenges such as rising rents, climate and demographic change, privatisation and individualisation. The affordability of housing and the search for ways to deal with the fact that it is increasingly difficult for young people to earn their own housing is also one of the topics we have opened as part of the theme of the year and which is highly relevant for both countries.
Saturday and Sunday were dedicated to both a Live action role play focused on supply chains in the textile industry and the big topic of sustainability of these chains in the current geopolitical and economic situation, and workshops focused on practical steps towards the creation of one of the CGYPP outputs – podcasts.
The program is initiated and financed by the Czech-German Fund for the Future.
Seminar in Berlin was organised with the support of the Citizens, Equality, Rights and Values Programme of the European Union and The Federal Agency for Civic Education (Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung).
