Cooperation and Development Network Eastern Europe


The Cooperation and Development Network Eastern Europe is a capacity-building network of political green youth organisations from Central, Eastern and South Eastern Europe. CDN’s political focus is on Eastern Europe where the organisation works with local partners. CDN also collaborates with organisations and activists from the rest of Europe who want to support a Green Eastern Europe.
CDN work is committed to upholding and fostering the values of the Green movement: gender equality, youth active participation in democracy, environmental protection. More elaboration on Green values is written at .

History

CDN was founded in December 2002 with the goal of developing and supporting green youth organisations in Eastern and South Eastern Europe through cooperation and transfer of knowledge. With an active collaboration and support of FYEG and Green Forum Sweden, CDN is now a network of Young Greens in Eastern Europe which supports the Young Green organisations in the region. CDN is focused on but not limited to study sessions, seminars, summer camps and other regular co-learning activities among constant communication and collaboration between its member and partner organisations. Also differences in methodology of educational work and cultural differences made it clear, that the green ideology in practice has to be differently implemented in Eastern Europe then in the West.
The first activity done by CDN was the Summer Camp 2003 "Peace and Reconciliation on the Balkan" in Jahorina, Bosnia and Herzegovina, with 80 young participants from all over Europe.

Structure and Organisation

CDN was built through the structure of the Federation of Young European Greens. Both organisations are forming a close connection, mainly because of common educational and political work. Also a lot of CDN member organisations are member of FYEG.
CDN is a network build of Member and Partner organisations. Partner organisations are those organisations with seat in a country of the European Union. This distinction aims on focusing the work on organisations from non-EU countries and on showing a signal towards these organisations. It was decided on the Network Meeting 2005 in Bitola, Macedonia. In difference to Member organisations Partner organisations do not have voting right on the network meeting and only one of the member of the CDN Executive Committee can come from a Partner organisation.
The highest decision making body of CDN is the Network Meeting. All Partner and Member organisations can send up to two delegates. Each Member organisation has one vote. The CDN Network Meeting decides upon the budget of the last and the coming year, the political and work report of the last year, the activity plan for the coming year and it elects and dismiss the CDN Executive Committee.
The CDN Executive Committee is realizing the political and organisational work of CDN between two CDN Network Meetings based on the decisions of the CDN Network Meeting. The CDN Executive Committee consists of 5 members. At least two of them have to be female and only one of them can come from a Partner organisation. The CDN Executive Committee meets at least five times a year.
Since mid-2006 CDN has a Gender Working Group. With the support of the CDN Network this Gender Groups on the issue of equal treatment of women and men in the societies of Eastern Europe. Mainly the question of compatibility of family and career which is a current problem of many young women in Eastern Europe is tackled by this Working Group.

Founders

The initiative for establishing CDN as a green network in Eastern Europe came from Macedonian Young Greens and Serbian Young Greens supported by the Federation of Young European Greens in December 2002.
Since its foundation CDN is sustainable supported by the Green Forum Sweden.
Another main source of support is the Council of Europe Youth foundation. The most of the current CDN activities are realized through the Council of Europe "All different - All equal" campaign.
Also from the very beginning CDN takes part in the Youth program of the European Commission, mainly through Exchanges. According to the changes in the Youth program future youth work in Eastern Europe will be closer to its necessaries.
Further more activities are realized through the support of the Bundesverwaltungsamt, Referat Internationaler Jugendaustausch im Bereich des Bundesministeriums für Familie, Senioren, Frauen und Jugend sowie des Auswärtigen Amtes as well as Member of the European Parliament and the Federation of Young European Greens.

Educational and Political Work

The main instrument of the educational work of CDN is the exchange of young people from all over Europe. These exchanges are either seminars under the support of the Council of Europe Youth Foundation, Youth Exchanges under Youth in action program of the European Commission, Study Sessions in the Budapest Study Center of the Council of Europe and Pilot Projects.
Further more the CDN homepage, e-lists and audiovisual materials are used for the exchange of knowledge and competence within the CDN Partner and Member organisations.
The activities which are planned for this year:
Study Session on Time Management and Youth participation in Budapest, Hungary
Seminar on Ethnical minorities, Youth and conflict prevention in Belgrade, Serbia
Summer Camp on Green Values for Southern Caucasus, Tbilisi, Beorgia
Youth Exchange in Armenia

Study Session

CDN organized in partnership with FYEG a study session called "The Glass ceiling is not your limit" at the European Youth Center in Budapest, Hungary. The study session was focused on the participation of people who identify as women, trans and/or genderqueer in political, business and social structures. This education activity explored and analyzed the patriarchal patterns that prevent equal opportunities based on gender discrimination and to support participants to organize themselves and change their environment in order to remove barriers and enable their participation in political, business and social structures.

Member and Partner Organisations

, the following organisations are member of the Cooperation and Development Network Eastern Europe:
Following organisations are partner of the Cooperation and Development Network Eastern Europe:
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