The aim of the project is to provide a platform for more inclusive democratic and civic youth engagement in decision-making by creating a structure to engage marginalised youth in intersectional cooperation for development of joint actions towards a socially just and ecologically fair future.
Through this project we will be setting up a Youth Hub in conjunction with our project partners, Generation (Change)?. The Youth Hub is a non-formal educational place within a formal education set-up. It offers a recreational environment through which the youth worker can work with young people so that they can come up with projects and initiatives that enhance their potential. The youth hub will also engage in various community activities to ensure as much contact as possible with the young people and the community.
A Youth Hub can be viewed as a microcosm of society. The young people involved created their own agenda, a democratic structure, shape the space to be inclusive, tackle injustices, intersectional issues within the group and is in itself an experiment in radical democracy. Creating a youth hub, a space where young people meet and engage, can also serve as an incubator for developing visions for a positive future without current societal boundaries, oppressions and limitations, and create a vision for the future that transcends them.
The aims and objectives will be reached through the Youth Hub based in the Friends of the Earth Green Resource Centre in Floriana bordering Marsa. Generation (Change)? had conducted a feasibility study and identified many community benefits flowing from the establishment of a social Centre in Marsa. The feasibility study has found that the youth centre would function as a regional facility for youth cultural development and provide appropriate educational and recreational facilities for all the community, especially young people.
The Youth Hub will offer support and alternative leisure spaces, where young people between 16 and 25 years can spend their free time interacting with peers in a safe environment, exploring their talents and developing personal, political and social skills. The Youth Hub will run once a week until the end of the project.
The YEAH Youth Hub benefits from a grant under the Active Citizens Fund from Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway, through the EEA Grants.