Author : Levan Doliasvhili

Training Course “Be(e) the Change”
After successful campaign Right to Be(e), Georgian Youth Eco Movement became partner of the international European training mobility youth workers Training Course - “Be(e) the Change”. Youth and Environment Europe (YEE) is a network of 42 environmental youth organisations from 26 European countries. Our organisation - SAEM is a  Full member of this “big green family” since 1995.
The training-course was held in Toulcův Dvůr, Prague, which made perfect atmosphere for non-formal education and development of new skills.
There were 32 participants, from 14 partner organisations of 13 countries, taking part in the training. Among them “Georgian Youth Eco Movement” was represented by two delegates: Ketevan Kochladze - Vice President of the organisation and a quality manager at JSC «BORJOMMINWATER»; and Levan Doliashvili – Member of the organisation, PhD student in Geology at Ilia State University and a geologist at the environmental company – GAMMA CONSULTING LTD.
Training was well organised and planned ,where two trainers were sharing their experience: Ilona Olehlova and IlzeJece .
Throughout the training course there were held many informative sessions about improvement of organisational skills of environmental campaigning.
Training course took place during August 23-30, 2016. The course consisted of various events, such as Team Building activities, group and individual works. The sessions were about following issues which are needed to organize successful campaigns: familiarizing with funding opportunities, youth motivation, time management, activity planning, sharing of knowledge.
The days were followed by pleasant evenings with the events given in the picture below

Within the intercultural evening participants presented their traditional cuisine. Among others our cuisine got high appreciation. Apart from tasting different cuisine, there were questions about each product, that made the evening even more pleasant.
You can read more about the training course and each day in this detailed summary: https://storify.com/082016/training-course-be-e-the-change

YEE Annual Meeting 2016
YEE Annual Meeting is a statutory meeting of YEE which takes place every year and where the delegates of the Member Organisations gather and plan together the future activities of the Federation. Based on elections, a status in the network is given to various member organisations. For each organisation, the elective decisions are based on the wish and activity history during last years. There also happens elections of YEE board members.
The meeting was held after the end of the training course. It lasted three days. SAEM is a full member of YEE and respectively invited to the annual meeting. After successful training course and conclusive meeting, General Assembly with its maximum vote number elected Ketevan Kochladze as a board member and Member Organisation Officer ( Read here) . Among General Assembly SAEM was represented by Levan Doliashvili.
Future projects were planned within the annual meeting. SAEM will be partner of Finnish NGO – Nature League (Luonto-Liitto). We plan together training course - „International Environmental Action Days“, which will take place in Finland. Although, appropriate planning and finding the source of funding (Erasmus+ etc) is needed for the project approval. For all of this, SAEM, as a partner, participates actively in the processing phase.