The COVID-19 pandemic has been a difficult time for everyone, in particular marginalised young people across Europe who have seen their world turned upside down and have struggled to stay connected and integrated. Over the past few months, a pan-European consortium of NGOs have been working together on the CONTINUE project - co-funded by the Erasmus+ programme - to gather the stories of young people from the UK, Germany, Italy, Hungary, Denmark, Lithuania and Portugal who have lived through these unprecedented times.

The young people have co-led the story gathering and curation workshops and are now ready to share their findings with members of the European community at this online Coversation of Change event. The event will be facilitated by Hayley Trowbridge from People's Voice Media and aims to open up a conversation between young people and decision-makers from across Europe about how COVID-19 has impacted the lives of young people, what is different across the nations and what are the commonalities?

The Conversation of Change event will take place on Zoom on Thursday 7th April, 1pm - 3.30pm GMT / 2pm - 4.30pm CET, and is aimed at young people, community leaders, members of the various European communities, those who work in European, national and local government, health and social care, education sectors, NGOs and beyond.

PLEASE NOTE

• The date of this event has changed to Thursday 7th April 2022.
• The event will take place 1pm - 3.30pm GMT / 2pm - 4.30pm CET.
• The event will take place online using Zoom, a link for which will be sent out nearer the date. Please look out for emails from People's Voice Media and Eventbrite.
• The event will be delivered in English. However, there may be translation options for some European languages. Please indicate at registration if this is a requirement.
• Booking will close at 4pm GMT / 5pm CET on Thursday 31st March 2022 so that we have enough time to accommodate for access and translation needs.

ABOUT THE CONTINUE PROJECT

Connecting European Youth through Storytelling

CONTINUE will support young people suffering from social exclusion to tackle the specific challenges of post-COVID times in terms of staying connected and integrated into European communities. For youth on the margins of society, COVID emergency raised multiple complications such as:

• increase of their financial, material and health related vulnerabilities;
• loss of their existing connections to the institutions, social care system, job opportunities & decrease of their chances of social integration;
• lack of some basic skills and capacities in digital communication cutting them from their social, educational and economic connections.

For tackling these challenges, CONTINUE intends to:

• understand the main difficulties of marginalised youth during COVID-19 and their vision about the main challenges of post-COVID times;
• create a digital framework for supporting a smooth transfer from offline to online exchanges between young people, youth organisations and governance structures;
• capacity build for young people to delivery local social actions;
• enhance dialogue between stakeholders, policy makers and youth and improve relevant policy.

CONTINUE will directly involve young people with migrant and other marginal backgrounds in the project activities in order to enhance the interaction between individuals, their communities and the pan-European levels. .

CONTINUE will be realised by a Consortium of 8 NGOs working with marginal youth groups, experienced in youth education, community-based activities, policy recommendations, working with an extended network of organisations from different sectors.