Regional youth hackathon: “Leave no one behind- innovating to go beyond inclusion” organized by UNFPA Eastern Europe and Central Asia   took part   in   Istanbul, Turkey,  on 10-12 of December.

Yulia Andzekarska ( Youth Coordinator at NCPHA  PETRI-Sofia) and Nino Chitishvili ( Fellow at PETRI-Sofia, youth advocate from Y-PEER)  were participating in the meeting.

Working with open minded people for two and a half days from Turkey, Bulgaria, Georgia, Netherlands, Russia, Serbia, Estonia, Ukraine, Kyrgyzstan, Albania, Armenia, Moldova was interesting and productive experience.  We were working to find out  the main challenges that young people face,  to know how we, as young people can continue supporting future processes for youth civic engagement, SRHR, education, employment.

During the session for stories of successes and failures eight stories were highlighted and shared with participants. I had an opportunity to share my personal story and got very inspirational feedback from my listeners.

During Inclusion Café three questions were tackled by participants in three rounds to synthesize learnings from stories. In the end of the day group identified opportunities for building solutions.  It was an excellent opportunity to talk and find out the solutions all together. Of course one of solutions is to strengthen peer to peer education. I had a chance to share with information about this amazing tool and Y-PEER work itself.

On the second day of our meeting during “Open Space” and “Proaction Café” I was able to get to know more about other participants’ work, to

share      my experience and to work on new ideas. The way of having these meeting, discussing what has been done on our national level and what is still pending is something that I would take with me as a working method as well. Finding out the main challenges that young people face, to know how we, as young people can continue supporting future processes is milestone for our work for youth civic engagement, SRHR, education, employment, sitting around one table with people who has different needs  helped us to find out the best solutions based on our experience and our needs.

Sitting around one table with people who has different needs helped us to find out the best solutions based on our experience and our needs. During the meeting I learnt more about young people’s needs around us, about the situation in the region regarding the SRHR of young people with disabilities,  how to work to engage young key populations more.

I am happy to feel that me and my friends are bringing young people’s voices to decision-makers and we have to do our best to be more involved in all the processes around us, moreover about us, no matter of our needs all of us are united for bringing ideas in to actions, to support young key populations being engaged into processes.

Support of “UNFPA Eastern Europe and Central Asia” must be appreciated and  we as  youth advocates  are thankful to have this space for our ideas and networking, more space where you feel that “No one is left behind”.