Hi THE COMMUNITY… My name is LIana (or Enli), I’m a lawyer, journalist and very happy to see here active discussions among youth for common better future…. Being involved in many national and international projects it’s pleasure for me to be in your virtual platform and share with you, also gain from you, new, innovative ideas… See you online!!! 
Enli
What not to miss in Armenia?
Hi Enli, welcome to Edgeryders! It seems by looking at your profile that you’ve been involved with both public and civil society initiatives. What is your intuition about the spaces to be in that are most interesting for contributing to social change? And which one is closest to your heart?
Another thing is that we really really look forward to learning about projects making a contribution to improving someone’s life in a way, especially personal projects that someone puts the heart and soul in… Like for example these guys in Cairo, Egypt who actually built a road because there wasn’t one connecting them to the highway. No public authority support, they just went ahead and did it!! so I look forward to see what hands on approaches - similar or from different fields- are there in Armenia.
Happy browsing, there’s a ton of stories from all over here on Edgeryders, if you’re interested in a particular thing to write about or share with people in your crowds just let me know and I’m happy to help.
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Hi Enli, welcome to Edgeryders
Have you had time to read some of the stories of others in here like Daniel, Noemi or myself? Our stories are posted a bit further down in the group…Asking one another questions that require us to think a little is a good way to break the ice and get the conversation rolling, so please feel free to do so
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Starting the story
Hi Noemi and Nadia. It’s nice to meet you.
I’m now exploring the network and try to reach every interesting story and idea. There are all great and impressive.
Concerning to social projects and my stories, I’ll add that I’m realy interested in youth and youth participation in decision making process and priority issued like human rights, employment, environment and education. 3 years ago I created the youth initiative called Let’s Create Smile and that is some kind of modern Robbin Hood, as our aim is using the “power” and creativity of young people make world to smile, people to believe in better future. Our mission is to help people (especially children) in need and with disabilities get involved in the society, provide psychological and legal assistance, help with food and clothes, organize for them different kind of events, including art therapies, bicycle riding and spectacles and just make them feel that we are care about them. Now we are working on the creation of art room for the children with mental disorders to get them closer to the art which will allow them to do what they can do…they have really bright imagination.… 
So this is a part of the projects that I do. Hope I posted it in the right place.
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Decision making!
Hello @Enli, nice to meet you. My name is Alberto, Italian living in Belgium at the moment. Something you wrote makes me quite curious: you say you are interested in youth participation in decision making. Is this theoretical or is it actually happening? Do you see experiences in Armenia where young people are making participatory, democratic decisions? There are some experiences in Edgeryders about this – another Italian edgeryder, @Stefano Stortone, has significant experience in participatory budgeting (here is his story), and we would be very interested in knowing about any experience in this direction, and meeting the people behind them!
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Youth are ready to participate!
Hi Alberto… nice to meet you too… once in 2012 being in Belgium during UN Post 2015 meeting I’ve been nominated as a representative of youth in UN working group on MDGs… and I’m representing there not only Armenian youth, but youth in generel… I had many speeches and represent interest of youth in many platforms, (in Belgium, Turkey, Cypros, New York)… for being it more visible you can see one of my speeches in UN Stakeholder Meeting on Post - 2015 development agenda here. where I was invited to open the meeting…… I’d love to hear from each of you positive or negative stories about participation…what makes it difficult? which issues are the most important for you that you’ll want the world to hear…? the solution of the problems/barriers of particaipation comes from the stories told… and i’d love to answer any other question that you will have by seeing my video attached… !
Summary from the discussion in Europe
Enli, I think you may find this write-up summarising the discussion we had around this topic. It is the result of a process where we drew the background of what statistics were available around young people’s participation in formal channels, as well as how they were interpreted by researchers, public administrations…and then asked community members whether the findings resonated with their own experiences and understanding. These findings went into the policy publication we delivered for the Council of Europe.
After this process we were approached by a former deputy governor of the Swedish central bank to do another project exploring what was happening around the Baltic Sea states and it seems we were not so far off the mark.It would be interesting to see how the experiences are similar or different in Armenia, no?
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Thank you for the topic!
Dear Nadia, thank you so much for the link… it’s wonderful topic to examine and to compare… sure I’ll find here many interesting facts… I’ll examine it deeply and try to find similar or different experiences… Thank you again!
Depends on what
Voter turnout at the last European elections in 2009 was 50% for voters aged 55 or older; but only 29% for voters aged 18 to 24 (source). At least in the EU, there is a disconnect between the high energy and idealism expressed by many young people and the failure to turn up at the ballot box of younger voters. We investigated this apparent contradiction in the first Edgeryders exercise, and the result was more or less this: as you say, young people stand ready to participate, but only if the participation channel makes a credible commitment that participation makes a difference. Many young people don’t believe they can make any difference in the elections, so they don’t vote. On the other hand, the same people may participate passionately to exercises like the ones organized by Stefano and others.
So far, EU democracies have performed quite badly in coming up with credible participation channels.
As for me personally, I don’t want the world to hear me out. I want to be able to make the occasional direct change. For me, the space where I seem to be able to make a small difference is the open data movement – here’s my story. One European-level thing we made is a small service called TweetYourMEP, which allows you to, well, easily and find and contact any member of the European Parliament via Twitter – useful if you are trying to pressurize the parliament into making a certain decision.
But enough of me. What about Armenia?
Hello Enli!
Welcome on board!
I am very happy to share this space with you! I think what you do is very special and should be shared with more people not only locally but also globally. The energy and enthusiasm you have is really extraordinar which means you automatically get a mission to initiate as many great things as possible, because you have really a lot of chances to succeed in them!
Looking forward to work with you.
See you tomorrow at the bubble festival on Northern Avenue and then at “Tie and Wind” cycling action!
Cheers
V
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Thank you so much for this wonderful platform!
Thank you so much dear Vahagn…. thanks for sharing this initiative and giving the possibility to connect the people…interesting and creative people… I’m sure together we will do great works…
See you during tomorrow’s cycling day…
Have a nice evening,
Enli