2022 Med Youth Meeting in Beirut, Lebanon
In 2022, the choice of the COPIL for the annual meeting fell on Beirut, in order to allow the participants to discover the reality of a country of the Middle East, through the example of Lebanon, a country which crosses these last years a deep crisis with heavy repercussions on the young people and the associative fabric of this country.
This meeting was held from November 23rd to 26th, 2022, and was organized in partnership with Arcenciel Liban/France and ANND, with the support of the steering committee.
This meeting was held from November 23rd to 26th, 2022, and was organized in partnership with Arcenciel Liban/France and ANND, with the support of the steering committee.
This meeting gathered 80 young people from 16 countries around the Mediterranean. Unfortunately, visa problems prevented the participation of 4 young Palestinians to this meeting.
The program of this rich meeting included:
- A visit to the city of Beirut to anchor the meeting in its host territory.
- The meeting of many local actors (including the premises of Arc en Ciel Lebanon in the Bekaa). These field visits allowed us to discover the local associative fabric and to understand how the Lebanese youth are impacted by the current crisis, but also what are their mobilization levers. Highlighting the Lebanese context is also an opportunity to reflect on the contexts of origin of all the young people of the meeting, to share testimonies, to better understand the realities of the different countries and thus, to appropriate our Mediterranean belonging and to learn to "make region". These field visits were supervised and animated by members of the COPIL.
- The realization of a public debate on the REF's booklet 8 "Mediterranean youths are committed: Emancipations, creations, des-espoirs, struggles" at the Saint-Joseph University in Beirut
- The realization of exchange workshops in podcast format. Indeed, the thematic workshops organized each year in the framework of the annual meetings included this time a recording session of 5 thematic podcasts. The setting up of this work around podcasts answered several objectives: the need in our opinion to encourage young people to open up to these new online tools which allow to promote reflections, projects, practices, in all independence and with light technical constraints, in order to bring their voice in the public debate and to promote their projects. These podcasts will also allow the members of the network who could not participate in this annual meeting to have access to the work carried out during the meeting, but also to promote them more widely to the general public.
