Discover Youth Talents (V4 conference)

The Slovak Presidency of the Visegrad Group began on 1st July 2018 and will run until 30th June 2019. The motto of the presidency is "Dynamic Visegrad for Europe",

Visegrad Group (V4 - Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Slovak Republic) and Eastern Partnership countries (EaP - Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Republic of Moldova, Ukraine) and Partner Countries in the Western Balkan region  (Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro and Serbia, Macedonia) have a productive and steadily developing relationship with substantial dialogue across a wide range of youth issues, working seminars and annual V4 presidential meetings supported by the active participation of representatives of Partnership between the European Commission and the Council of Europe in the field of youth, and SALTO Eastern Europe and Caucasus Resource Centre.

The main aim of the conference is to discuss the positive influence and enable full development of the potential, the systematic support of talented young people with fewer opportunities and the issue of their identification in informal and non-formal education, sharing examples of good practice and highlighting the role of talent support and development in various fields. Focus on current challenges such as increasing the capacity of youth workers to use innovative approaches, discovering potential, highlighting cooperation between sectors or working with young people at risk of marginalization.

Overall conference goals:

• The only event in the youth field during the Slovak presidency (“flagship”),
• Slight follow up of the talent topic raised by the 2016 Slovak EU Presidency,
• A goal is to share practices and to exchange between the national representatives, to tackle the issue of talents,
• How to support young people in discovering and nurturing their talents, how the youth work can work with talents,
• Western Balkans join the event for the first time,
• Create a platform for expert discussion to support the full development of potential and talent with an emphasis on non-formal and informal learning,
• Exchange of experience and examples of good practice in youth work and its role in developing potential and talent between V4 countries, the Eastern Partnership and the Western Balkans,
• Bring together the experts, researchers, youth representatives, and policymakers to advance dialogue between these stakeholders.

Profile of participants:

V4 countries – 12 participants, 3 per state (representative of NA, Ministry Youth Department, youth delegate)

Western Balkans – 10 participants, 2 per state (ministry representative, 1 youth delegate)

Eastern Europe and the Caucasus – 12 pax, 2 per state (ministry representative, 1 youth delegate)

2 people from Salto SEE