When: September 2014 – on going

Where: Gyumri, Shirak

Aim: Assist with the improvement of the quality of life of Gyumri youth, through development and implementation of a need-based local youth policy.

Description: ”Youth Initiative Center” NGO in cooperation with ‘Gyumri Youth Council” non-formal expert group implemented ”Gyumri youth policy development” project. Within the framework of the programme a research was conducted with the Institute for Policy Research and Analysis of Lithuania to identify youth policy priorities in Gyumri and develop mechanisms of local youth policy implementation.

The strategic objectives of the programme were:

1. To identify youth policy priorities in Gyumri through researching and analyzing needs of young parallel with the existing strategies and tools;

2. To develop local youth policy and lobby it as a principal policy paper on youth development of Gyumri municipality using large-scale participatory methodologies;

3. To ensure mechanisms of implementation of the developed youth policy by means of transparent action planning, visibility and monitoring mechanisms.

During the project the following has been done:

1. Collection and analysis of the existing Youth Policy data in Gyumri which has been crosschecked with international experts.

2. Conducting a 5 days training course for local expert-researchers by international experts involving them in the workshops organized with different youth policy stakeholders.

3. Organization of workshops with Gyumri youth policy stakeholders during which situational analysis has been done and a further cooperation plan has been developed. A survey has been done among 400 young people from Gyumri according to the survey designed by the sociologist.Meetings were organized with the representatives of different departments of Shirak regional administration, Gyumri municipality, NGOs, student councils, cultural and sports organizations.

4. Publish a report about the research findings (in the Armenian and English languages).

5. Organize a conference and present the findings of the research in Yerevan.

During the research YIC NGO has cooperated with the Ministry of Sports and Youth Affairs as well as from Gyumri Municipality.

The research was done with the supported of the Norwegian Royal Embassy.

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