The participants from the six project regions Baden-Württemberg (DE), Piedmont (IT), Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes (FR), La Rioja (ES), Fédération Wallonie-Bruxelles (BE) and Dolj County (RO) pooled their international experience and their expertise to find solutions to six specific barriers to youth engagement: not being heard, funding, rigid institutional structures, mental health, education and lack of trust.

Dobre Mihai Ionut from one of the Romanian Mindchangers projects made it clear that these barriers can be felt throughout the EU: “I thought that these blockages only existed here in Romania and only made life difficult for us - I have the other project regions in this one idealized in this respect. At the Mindchangers International Youth Meeting I was able to exchange ideas with other project sponsors from the EU and noticed that we all struggle with more or less the same problems and challenges.”

Auf dem Mindchangers Future Impact Summit – directing global change On September 26, 2023, the impulses from the International Youth Meeting with Rudi Hoogvliet, State Secretary for Development Policy in Baden-Württemberg, representatives from politics, municipalities, NGOs and science as well as young committed people from Argentina, Kenya, Uganda, Indonesia and Baden-Württemberg were shared. Württemberg discussed. In this way, young people, political hosts, experts and stakeholders worked together to develop solutions for the 2030 Agenda and contributed their individual perspectives. The results of the summit flowed into the Mindchangers Stuttgart Declaration which is to be passed on to local and international institutions, representatives of civil society and networks as an impulse and catalog of measures to overcome the barriers to young engagement.

We have now officially reached the halfway point of the 2030 Agenda. This shows us that we as a global community need to work together even more intensively and closely to achieve the sustainability goals. The commitment of young people, together with civil society commitment and the cooperation of all actors at the local level, is a fundamental key to achieving the SDGs. It is important to recognize and include the expertise of all actors, especially young committed people, emphasizes Grace A. Orao, coordinator of East and South Africa at the United Network of Young Peacebuilders and speaker at the Mindchangers Future Impact Summit:

“It is important to recognize that young people around the world are at the forefront of global justice efforts and are actively engaged. Unfortunately, young people are often portrayed in the media as troublemakers or victims. To counteract these stereotypes and misconceptions, we […] work together to produce reports that prove otherwise.”

That was exactly the aim of the three-day conference: to create a space to network, form new partnerships, strengthen existing partnerships and exchange expertise and experiences from our commitment.

Philipp Keil, who was present at the International Youth Meeting and the Future Impact Summit as managing director of the Baden-Württemberg Development Cooperation Foundation (SEZ), is “convinced of the power of the committed people and the ideas presented” and emphasized in his speech: “ We will work very hard to further promote young commitment to climate justice. To this end, as an SEZ we will also use our access to the state parliament and the ministries. The idea of ​​Mindchangers to strengthen cooperation between political leaders in a region - in our case the State Ministry of Baden-Württemberg - and associations and initiatives from society is the founding idea of ​​the SEZ.

You can get further impressions of the Mindchangers International Youth Meeting and updates on the Mindchangers Stuttgart Declaration on the Instagram profile @mindchangers_bw and on ours website!