MOSAIC - The training kit for Euro-Mediterranean youth work

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the youth field to co-operate with other sectors and co-ordinate services for youth,
involving young people themselves in the process.” 113 In that sense, it requires youth
participation and youth empowerment through various mechanisms such as youth
structures (youth NGOs and national youth councils) and through civil society, from
the formulation to the implementation and evaluation of the policy. Since youth
NGOs play a key role in reaching young people with programmes and services and
in representing their interests, the implementation and co-ordination of a national
youth policy also involves reaffirming their existence and scope of action. 114
Young people face a broad range of dangers or challenges in the modern world.
However, youth policies in many countries are only one-dimensional, focusing on one
aspect of these challenges, for example in the area of education, welfare or culture. 115
A broader strategy has to be adopted covering a variety of such policy domains at
national, regional and local levels as employment, formal education and training,
health, housing, leisure, culture, social affairs and protection, welfare, the family and
criminal justice. This approach is called ‘integrated youth policy’ 116 and it has been
strongly encouraged by different international organisations. In this respect, some of
the issues to be covered by a youth policy are education, employment, hunger, poverty,
the environment, health, drug abuse, juvenile delinquency, leisure-time activities,
girls and young women, and the full and effective participation of young people in
the life of society and in decision making. 117
In addition, to manage integrated youth policies across the key policy domains,
mechanisms of co-ordination and intervention are seen as necessary at national and
local levels. These mechanisms cover youth-policy planning, cross-sectoral co-ordination
(a body or a person responsible for youth affairs), the administrative capacity
to run a co-ordinated policy, a youth representation strategy (youth council/parliament,
youth hearing/panel) and other means of listening to the voice of young people, for
example, youth studies and surveys. 118
In the final analysis, the formulation, making and implementation of a youth policy
is in the hands of the policy makers at various policy levels, whether they be local,
regional, national and/or international. However, the relation between youth policy and
youth work is very close, through its organised mechanisms such as youth organisations
and national youth councils. To the extent that youth policy requires the participation
of young people with all their needs, problems, dynamism and potential for innovative
thinking, youth work provides a space for young people to be involved and be influential
in political (and institutional) mechanisms that affect their well-being.
To enforce the mechanisms for such influence and involvement is highly challenging
in complex political cultures such as those of Europe and the Mediterranean. However,
there are international efforts for youth-policy development and co-operation in the
broader Euro-Mediterranean context, notably the focus on youth policies in Euro-
Mediterranean co-operation within the framework of the Partnership on Youth by the
Council of Europe and the European Commission. The reasons for developing activities
on youth policy development in this framework relate to different challenges that
young people face both in Europe and the Mediterranean countries, and the need to
learn from each other and deepen their knowledge of the two regions because they
are deeply inter-related. 119
T-Kit No.11 - MOSAIC - The training kit for Euro-Mediterranean youth work