Wednesday 15 July 2009

What's the first discussion? Youth!

This is the first post out of the plenary hall. The first discussion was about... the youth. The proposal to the nomination committee made by the central committee was balanced in questions of gender, denomination and region, but not of youth and the relation between lay and ordained people. The nomination committee is important, because works out the lists with the candidates for the different committees of the Assembly, and also of the central committee of CEC.

There was only 1 young person proposed (Teodor from Romania) - with 11 members within the nomination committees. In the Ecumenical movement and also in the standing orders of the Assembly is written that there should be at least 20% of all candidates younger than 30.

So Stephi asked the Assembly, why the proposed list was no youth balanced. Then a discussion started with Milan from the Czech Republic, supporting Stephi. But in the end we were not successful - there were only a few delegates supporting us. Even some young delegates didn't agree. I was a little bit disappointed about that.

Nevertheless, it was great that we as youth showed that we are there (at the whole only 40 out of 306 delegates, which is only 11%). Now the next task should be to make our contribution to the discussions about questions, not directly linked to youth matters - and at the same time to insist on the significance of real youth participation in all Ecumenical matters.

2 comments:

  1. As far as I remember during youth delegates meeting Eric from Sweden was proposed to nomination committee as well as some other people. I'm really puzzled why the agreement young delegates came to was canceled. Or what happened?

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  2. Dear burbalka,
    the youth representation quota of 20%, as it is said in the Constitution, wasn't reached in almost all committees. The nominations committee and also the whole Assembly thought that other questions are more important than the youth representation.

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