What is Y movement?

Y Movement aims to bring diverse voices of civil society, informal citizens groups, parents, teachers and other stakeholders around the same goal – to address and advocate for violence prevention, gender equality, life skills and health education in schools across Balkans.

This requires innovative and systematic approach and strong commitment from all people to stand together and work for positive and peaceful societies for young people in the Western Balkans. Beside regional and national actions and stakeholders, we need community-based actors and collective action to make sustainable changes in the future

We strive to strongly advocate with decision-makers for developing, changing and implementing policies for youth. In CARE’s case, the main goal is to reduce poverty and achieve social justice globally – and in YMI’s case is introduction of healthy lifestyles in education by supporting culture of non-violence.

THE CHANGE WE WANT TO SEE:

• Life Skills Education programmes such as Program Y mandatory in formal school curriculum in the Western Balkans region;
• Young Man Initiative Advocacy platform acts as the resource centre in Life Skills Education and advocacy hub for empowering members to share experiences and take collective actions on local, national and regional level;
• Empowered communities act as long-term agents of change for violence prevention, gender equality, life skills and health education in schools;
• Changed attitudes on violence prevention, gender equality, life skills and health education among youth in the Balkans;

Through Y Movement, CARE and YMI partners stand for:

Equality – because we believe that differences should be respected and listened and each person should be valued by their unique contributions in any society.

Diversity -we have different approaches in working with different environments, but we strive to achieve the same goals.

Innovation & Creativity – We challenge ourselves and environment by using “out of box” thinking in order to achieve best results and our goals.

Solidarity – Our coalition is based on strong partnerships among variety of stakeholders, where we nurture respect and tolerance.

Transparency & Accountability – We strongly believe in the change we want to make, led by our own examples and based on high transparency and strong guarantees for our approaches.

Youth Leadership – Our activities are made by youth and for youth and we strongly believe that young people should be given a chance to innovate, bring solutions and challenge the world around us.

CARE puts gender equality in the centre because we know that we cannot overcome poverty and social injustice until all people have equal rights and opportunities. We recognize that power relations between genders and ages are unequal, and that we must challenge patriarchy and promote gender equality to achieve social justice.

We develop and seek for partnerships with all well-intentioned, dedicated and consistent individuals and organisations and institutions, especially youth and their parents, teachers, peer educators, sports and social workers, pedagogues, psychologists, activists, members of academia who share the same vision and values to achieve the goals.

Its time for a change!

If you are motivated and enthusiastic individual/organization reading this and willing to support/join our movement – click here!