12/02/2023
Poland
participants
The beginnings of cooperation between ESN Poland and Polish National Youth Council dates back to 2012. By our collaboration we aim to achieve our common goals related to youth empowerment, education and advocacy for the rights of the Polish youth. The cooperation takes place on purely partnership terms, and brings many benefits for both sides. In the course of the previous year we have tightened our relations more than ever before, primarily regarding the activities within the framework of the European Year of Youth 2022. Polish National Youth Council, as a representative body of young people in Poland, played a crucial role in implementing the initiatives and policies of the European Year of Youth at the national level. During this time we both received various and extensive trainings facilitated by NYC as well as we actively participated with their organisational activities. As ESN Poland is a prominent part of the National Youth Council, at the beginning of 2023 we became the member of the most important 1st Chamber of NYC, and, therefore - our voice within the Organisation will be bold and significant.
The initiative is a series of ongoing, short- and long-term activities:
- active participation in each other statutory events - ESN Poland as the member of the National Youth Council actively participates in the internal work of the NYC and brings international students perspective to our shared work. From the different point of view, President of the National Youth Council is always invited (and almost always participates) to our National Assemblies, where she also promotes work done by the NYC.
- engagement of ESN Poland volunteers in capacity building activities facilitated by the Polish National Youth Council - volunteers of NYC are always interested in the work of member organisations and actively invest their time in providing us with interesting training opportunities. They eagerly participate in capacity-building events organised by ESN Poland in the role of the external trainers. The workshops they provide are usually oriented towards advocacy and youth related topics, their speciality is training done on the 11 Youth Goals, facilitated once a year during our Local Presidents Community Meeting,
- liaising services provided by Polish National Youth Council to the Local Sections of ESN - this year we had a pleasure to receive a request from one of our member organisations, to liaise between them and Polish National Youth Council, as they were organising an event on their university and they wanted to include representative of the NYC as the speaker in it. We helped to establish the connection between them and also send a representative to participate in the event itself,
- engagement of ESN Poland Representative to Polish National Youth Council in their organisational initiatives - to make our daily collaboration more efficient, we appointed a volunteer of ESN Poland to be officially our ESN Poland Representative to Polish National Youth Council. This person is responsible for our daily communication, relieving the National President in this task, informing about our most prominent initiatives, as well as representing our organisation in Local Representative's Team, advisory body to the Board of National Youth Council. Our representative is taking action in the working group revising the Statute of Polish National Youth Council, and with the National President participating in the Working Group on Student Organisation's Cooperation. We also had the honor to provide information on how our organisation is supporting Ukraine after the war started that was included in the NYC newsletter,
- in December 2022 Polish National Youth Council was celebrating its 10th anniversary and ESN Poland’s representative was present there to show our support to their growth through those many years.
To summarize, collaboration of our two organisations was bluming in this year. Due to our cooperation, the voices of international students in Poland are amplified and it is easier for us to advocate for them. Apart from our common efforts, volunteers of ESN Poland thanks to our partnership have a chance to boost their professional skills. Lastly, we are proud to be able to bring good practices into NYC and other youth organisations in Poland.
