Ilona Kazaryan
Team Leader, Europe House
Dear colleagues, partners, and collaborators,
This autumn we celebrate the third anniversary of the Europe House Skopje, a space for joint expression, innovation, and collaboration for young people coming from across the country and from various cultural, professional, and ethnical backgrounds.
Young people are the future and their opinions and views shall be the ones shaping it. Since their inception (2019-2022), the Europe Houses in Skopje, Strumica, and Kriva Palanka welcomed more than 12,500 participants to 550 physical events. Most of them are young people or those empowering youth to raise their voices and be heard. Next year with the opening of Europe Houses in four more locations across the country we plan to further expand this reach.
As the newly appointed Team Leader, together with the Europe House team, I look forward to working with and for youth towards achieving a profound societal change inspired by the young leaders’ greater engagement in decision-making processes and passing their legacy onto future generations.
Many times, I have witnessed the great importance of youth decision-making where value-building is often challenged to find answers to existing dilemmas. Indeed, it plays a central part in offering new answers and perspectives to interesting and thought-provoking questions while we are striving towards a joint vision for the future.
Europe House, our hub, remains a welcoming and inviting space for all progressive thinkers, innovators, and change-makers to bring about positive transformations in society and through dialogue and discussion inspire change toward a joint European future.
Jazz for KIDS partnered with the Skopje Jazz Festival
We are proud to have partnered the Skopje Jazz Festival for many years and always look forward to all the excitement of working together. This time they came up with a great idea – Jazz for KIDS at Europe House Skopje! We supported this event because we believe it is one of the crucial initiatives for investing in the education of younger generations and culture, leaving a legacy worth passing down and making a contribution to future generations.
It was such an exciting event that young jazzers enjoyed the endless possibilities of jazz music by finding their own sound and style.
Peer Violence – EU4Youth Days event on bullying and mental health
The EU has designated 2022 the European Year of Youth, and our focus is on the youth participation activities, their current topics of interest and the problems they face. Mental health takes priority on their interest radar. The fact that bullying is more than ever present in schools and the everyday life of teenagers is worrying.
We have so many games to play together, roads to take, and oceans to swim in. Why not see this as a way of living instead of giving in to the temptation of bullying, destroying friendships, taking too many pills and disorientating so many young lives? Life’s easy; we make it so hard by overthinking things and coping with the stress of recognising the right choice. – Berin Muhamed, student and initiator of the event.
Inspired by young people who are not reluctant to voice their opinions about the open raw wounds of society inflicted by what is now called “bullying,” we conducted a series of activities in several high schools. Launching the programme of activities was a good way of helping raise awareness about peer violence in the secondary school community, emphasising the negative impact it has on mental health and physical and emotional safety.
Thirty students, each from three different high schools, Zef Lush Marku, Rade Jovchevski Korchagin and Orce Nikolov, participated in these conversations discussing issues related to the mental health of young people and how to reduce peer violence in their school. To raise awareness among their classmates, the students created several short films that were later presented at the closing event.
“The idea for this activity originated from a student at Zef Lush Marku High School, Berin Muhamed. When Berin told me about it, it reminded me how strongly I felt about the issue of mental health. Naturally, this project had to involve those who were the most affected by this problem – the young people. Mental health is most vulnerable during adolescence, that is, during their school years. Peer violence can be very harmful during this period of self-discovery and experiencing the outer world. That’s why we decided to implement the activity in secondary schools. We started the project by organising workshops on mental health issues, placing great emphasis on peer violence. At this stage, I felt it necessary to provide educators who were thoroughly familiar with the subject. And that’s how the cooperation with Youth Can came about, that is, with the peer educators who did an excellent job.” – Mimoza Serafimovska, coordinator of the event
Skate, Remake, Eat-Repeat – University Student Assembly – UKIM
Giving a second life to objects and clothes that have already served their primary purpose is the most creative and effective way to reduce waste. As a result, reduction and reuse are the most effective ways you can save natural resources, protect the environment and save money.
University Student Assembly – UKIM organized an outdoor party called “Skate, Remake, Eat-Repeat” at the Skate Park near the Olympic Swimming Pool in Skopje. This outdoor merrymaking with music, food, and art has soon shifted into mega-creative gear repurposing old clothes. An excellent exchange initiative in which young people had the opportunity to revamp their wardrobes.
Europe House Kriva Palanka: Public debate on alternative cultural spaces as the focal point of creativity and artistic expression
#CultureMatters
Young people raise their voices: We need more space for creative expression!
According to an online survey carried out by the City of Kriva Palanka, the city lacks small stages for chamber music concerts and multimedia projects. Following the public debate, there was an exhibition of photographs of alternative cultural spaces, urban design concepts of layout rearrangement and a small concert.
The event was organized by the Center for Audiovisual Arts from Kriva Palanka, as part of the project United for Active Citizenship, implemented by the NGO Infocentаr with the support of the European Union. The panellists of the debate were the architect Natali Veleska and the art historian Gjorgi Kostovski.
Europe House Strumica: Encouraging cultural diversity and cultural exchanges
October was all about experiencing cultural diversity and cultural exchanges in Europe. With the month-long programmes and events organized within the Erasmus+ Exhibition, the youth from the city of Strumica and the region had the opportunity to learn more about the European cities Liepāja and Saraiķi in Latvia, Maribor in Slovenia, Braga in Portugal, and exchange cultural experiences with their peers who had participated in the Erasmus+ programme. With Skopje SOUP in Strumica, the local youth could also meet socially with 10 European Solidarity Corps volunteers, each from a different EU country, gaining valuable information and understanding through first-hand experience of the culture and lifestyle of each of the volunteer’s countries.
Last but not least, the cultural exchange rounded off with a week dedicated to the art of film by learning more about the German language and film. Within the German Film Week organized in cooperation with the German Embassy in Skopje, more than 100 young people attending a series of eight film screenings in Strumica, Štip and Kavadarci could observe and understand some of the social challenges and the cultural issues explored and addressed in different storylines intertwining and revealing both fiction and reality.
Stay tuned for our Birthday BUZZ!
