Eurodesk Awards 2012: Winnaars 'European Youth Information' (en) - Hoofdinhoud

At the end of September, the Eurodesk Awards 2012 for "Champions of European Youth Information" were presented at a ceremony during the annual European Seminar for Eurodesk Multipliers in Brussels. Eurodesk established these awards in 2011 to celebrate the day-to-day work of their local multipliers, who are helping young people discover and seize the numerous opportunities Europe has to offer.

The jury of experts awarded three local partners, or "multipliers", for their outstanding information and dissemination activities over the past year, while a fourth partner received a special recognition award.

And the champions are...

Information & Dissemination Champion:

aha - Tipps & Infos für junge Leute, Dornbirn (Austria) delivers comprehensive services directly informing and counselling young people on mobility issues. During its ‘Globehopper’ project, aha informed more than 2.700 young people in the region of Vorarlberg - during an information fair, with online advice and direct mobility counselling. The jury appreciated in particular that young people have been empowered to further inform their peers about European opportunities.

Multimedia & Online Activity Champion:

The Oficina Municipal de Información Juvenil Ayuntamiento de Jaca (Spain) and the Rural Youth Facilitators offer a concrete non-formal education opportunity for young people in the rural areas of Aragon to gain skills and competences of online radio journalists. The ‘Vozcasters’ web radio project also enables young people to be the disseminators of local and European news they are concerned with, supported by information professionals and youth workers.

Volunteer Involvement Champion:

Izmit Municipality Youth Information and Counselling Centre “Genç-iz”(Turkey) was awarded for displaying a clear method of involving young volunteers in information dissemination. The project trained already 100 young people to be information multipliers, thus, clearly linking information and participation through volunteering. In the course of the project, those young multipliers go local and voluntarily reach out at universities high schools etc., reaching more and more youngsters with information on European opportunities.

Special Recognition Award:

The Centre Europa Jove, Consell Comarcal del Barcelonès (Spain) was recognised for its specific focus on providing information and counselling for young people in the area of employment and opportunities to gain further skills and competences. The overall information and counselling services are complete and professional and, thus, an example of good practice, also in their way of using online information services (e.g. online job centre and online video advice on European opportunities in the field of training, learning and employment), complementary to ‘classical’ offline information activities.

One of the award presenters was Ms Chiara Gariazzo - Director for Youth and Sport, European Commission.

Watch the video of the winning projects and check out the photos from the award ceremony.