After our conference last June, we started building the Transition Handbook for Policy Makers, together with the community. Over the months of August and September, Edgeryders have reviewed papers on several transition issues, putting forward additional content or signaling key vulnerable points. THANK YOU! to everyone who took the time and patience to help. Rebecca Collins is almost done putting together the handbook (to be shared online), and she’ll make sure to acknowledge all contributors: first and foremost the entire Edgeryders community, and special thanks to those of you giving direct feedback.
Most papers conclude with recommendations to reform European youth policy, but a recurring question kept popping up ever since lote and #edgecamp meetups and more so after sharing our research: How to move forward? How can these recommendations become real courses of action?
Some of you voiced concern over the possibility of the handbook being yet another not-far-reaching-and-concrete instrument, talk (however sensible and informed) rather than action. We share that concern. So we are challenging ourselves, the Edgeryders community (that would be you) and the European policy community to work together. We are asking you, ourselves and everyone we know to collaboratively produce a list of policy measures so pragmatic, grounded in experience and well-designed that they are impossible to dismiss on the grounds that they are unrealistic or technically unsound. It’s hard, we know.
We are going to do it anyway. We simply cannot afford to aim any lower – in the face of the present, many-faceted crisis too much is at stake. And we think it can be done. It’s just hard, not impossible. But to do it, we need to combine two very different skill sets: that of Edgeryders – the young, radical changemakers – and that of policy wonks – the “system integrators” of new things into the existing institutional plumbing.
Want to help? Here’s how. We’d like to set up a working meeting in November (details will be announced in the forthcoming week) that will bring together members from the community, policy workers, innovators and life hackers to flesh out concrete proposals and sharpen the question of how institutions can make it easier for citizens to access resources or spaces they need to work together, innovate and implement creative solutions.
Here is an open ended, work-in-progress list of solutions that anyone can contribute to, so come join us! [click here to participate, instructions for funded travel etc.]. If there’s anything you think should be in the list of solutions just add it. It’s basically preparatory work and research for the meetup.