Context
The societies of the Western Balkans share a complex historical legacy and have many current challenges in common. However, distrust, prejudice and intolerance between the different ethnic groups remains widespread and undermines regional cooperation and joint action. In order to change this, greater understanding, tolerance and solidarity are needed.
The exchanges between young people are particularly important to encourage peaceful coexistence in the region. The Regional Youth Cooperation Office (RYCO), founded in 2016, therefore promotes reconciliation and cooperation through exchange programmes.
With support from relevant ministries, RYCO enables schools to collaborate and run youth exchange programmes. The institutional dimension to this opens up long-term prospects for reconciliation.
Objective
The institutional and operational expertise of RYCO has improved, enabling it to better manage regional cooperation projects and successful youth exchange programmes between the Western Balkans societies.
Approach
The project supports RYCO in improving its institutional and operational expertise by providing various training measures, preparing strategic documents and setting up a department for research, evaluation and learning.
Furthermore, the project promotes RYCO’s role in convening and facilitating donor cooperation and coordination meetings. The project also advises RYCO on developing and implementing regional school exchange programme – RYCO Superschools. In this programme, schools from the region enter partnerships, jointly apply for funding and receive further support before, during and after exchanges.
The project is co-funded by the European Union (EU).