News from the European YWCA Board

By Virpi | June 23, 2020

General Assembly 2020

The Board of the European YWCA took a decision to postpone the General Assembly. Now we can announce a digital General Assembly on October 24th via Zoom.

The Board made this decision as we cannot be certain that travel restrictions will be lifted across Europe by the autumn and our constitution requires that we have to have a GA every two years.

Cancellation of Study Session

The Board took the decision not to go ahead with Study Session in September in Budapest. Reasons for this include: a duty of care for our members and young women in our movement; and the uncertainty about the lifting of travel restrictions across Europe in time for planning and booking travel.

The Council of Europe have cancelled events to the end of August and since we informed them that we had concerns about holding the event in September, we have heard back from CoE that we will have to re-apply for 2021.

A Joint Statement on Youth and COVID-19

The European YWCA contributed to a joint statement on Youth and COVID19 to send to the European Institutions. This was a collaboration organized by the European YMCA with WAGGS, the International Scout Movement, the Duke of Edinburgh Awards, and the Red Cross. (Known as The Big Six)

As many countries come out of CoVid19 induced lock-down (some may say for now), a big economic crisis seems to be looming, and already many of our organizations and the services they provide to young people have been hit. Our young people have been hit too: many national rules for lock-down have neglected their education, their mental health, their physical health, and even their existence.

This joint statement urged European Institutions to steer their member states towards a different direction, and to dare to invest in youth, rather than looking at them (again) as an afterthought at best, or a threat at worst.

World YWCA Day on March 2020

Posted in General, News From You