International Meeting – Stuttgart 2023

At this year’s Mindchangers International Youth Meeting in Stuttgart September 25th – September 27th, young people who are active in the current Mindchangers projects worked relentlessly hand in hand to create a first draft of the Mindchangers Stuttgart Declaration – a policy paper with recommendations to overcome the barriers to youth engagement.

Participants from the 6 project regions Baden-Württemberg (DE), Piedmont (IT), Auvergne-RhôneAlpes (FR), La Rioja (ES), Fédération Wallonie-Bruxelles (BE) and Dolj County (RO) combined their international experiences and expertise to find solutions for 6 specific barriers to youth engagement: Not Being Heard, Funding, Entity Structures, Mental Health, Education and Lack of Trust.

At the “Mindchangers Future Impact Summit – directing global change” on September 26th, the resulting impulses from the International Youth Meeting were discussed with Rudi Hoogvliet, State Secretary for Development Policy in Baden-Württemberg, representatives from politics, municipalities, NGOs, and academia, as well as committed partners and young people from all around the world, in order for the approaches to be considered from different perspectives.

Young people, political hosts, experts and stakeholders worked together to develop solutions for the 2030 Agenda and create a first draft of the Mindchangers Stuttgart Declaration, which will be passed on to local and international institutions, civil society representatives and networks as an impulse and catalog of measures to resolve overcome the barriers to youth engagement.

We are now officially at the mid-term review of the 2030 Agenda, which shows us that as a global community we need to work together even more closely to achieve the goals of the 2030 Agenda. Youth engagement, together with civil society engagement and the interaction of all actors at the local level, is a fundamental key to achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

That is precisely why the goal of the three-day conference was to create a space to network, form new partnerships, strenghthen partnerships and share experiences we encounter every day in our engagement. Young people from Mindchangers projects and other true global impact makers, who are committed to global justice and sustainability were able to explore together innovative approaches to the UN 2030 Agenda.

If you want to see more impressions of the International Youth Meeting or stay up to date with the Mindchangers Stuttgart Declaration, check out @mindchangers_project on instagram and visit our website!