Philea Forum 2023 closing plenary began with the remarks of Cvjetana Plavsa-Matic, the director of the National Foundations for Civil Society Development. Cvjetana, with a ‘heart full of emotions,’ summarised three days of the gathering, which provided space for talking, exploring, and connecting. Participants took part in 11 site visits and met 45 Croatian civil society organisations. Cvjetana was grateful to Philea and The National Foundation for Civil Society Development teams for exceptional cooperation. She ended her speech with two words ‘Do good – by doing good, everything is possible.’

We need to address the challenges Europe is facing together.

Dubravka Šuica, Vice-President of the European Commission in charge of Democracy and Demography, started a keynote speech by expressing gratitude to the foundation sector: Thank you for making the life of EU citizens better. We can do more when we work together. Then she called for collaboration in strengthening democracy: We can agree that we cannot take democracy for granted. We must prepare to counter the challenges to democracy.

She summarised the deliberative democracy initiative conducted by the EC ‘Conference of the Future of Europe’ – a citizen-led series discussions from April 2021 to May 2022. It was done via a Multilingual Digital Platform where any European could share ideas, with more than 5 million unique visitors to the platform and more than 700,000 event participants. These proposals covered nine topics: climate change and the environment; health; a stronger economy, social justice and jobs; EU in the world; values and rights, rule of law, security; digital transformation; European democracy; migration; education, culture, youth, and sport. The outcomes of these discussions could also be agenda for philanthropic organisations. The issues top-rated by citizens are mental health, education, food waste, and demographic challenges. She highlighted challenges that could be particularly interesting for foundations: ensuring equal and fair opportunities, addressing the consequences of the cost-of-living crisis, and promoting lifelong learning. She also focused on demographic challenges, including issue nr 1 in Europe: aging and women’ absence in the labor market.

She ended with words: We leave no one and nowhere behind, including civil society organisations and citizens. We can do this on our own; we need to act together.

The last panel discussion of the Philea Forum 2023 was moderated by Vesna Bajsanski-Agic, the Executive Director of Mozaik Foundation and a board member of Philea. She hosted a conversation with four young leaders: Winnie Asiti – a member of the Next Generation Climate Board of Global Greengrants Fund; Anna Bondarenko – a founder and head of the Ukrainian Volunteer Service; Aleksej Leon Gajica – junior ambassador to the EU and for the Rights of the Children and Young People at UNICEF and Ela Evliyaoglu, psychologist and Civil Society expert of the Association of Youth Organization Forum (GoFor) in Turkey. Winnie works as a climate researcher and advisor for young people from Global South, promoting participatory grantmaking based on trust. Anna has been promoting volunteering in Ukraine for eight years, starting as grass root organisation and now working across Ukraine. Ela focuses on youth participation in developing youth policies in Turkey and currently works as a psychologist with young people after the earthquake. For four years as UNICEF ambassador, Aleksej has been asking young people and children in Croatia what problems they have so that UNICEF can propose new programs.

Challenges for young people.

According to Winnie, young climate activists are struggling with the issue of funding – donors provide limited resources for climate issues. Young people often don’t have access to these funds since they are too young to register an organisation and can’t meet the formal application requirements. Visibility is another challenge – climate activists from the Global South don’t get similar visibility to their colleagues from Western countries.

According to Alex, the critical challenge is young people’s mental health. He gave an example of a school shooting in Belgrade, which took place a month ago. A 13-year-old shot ten people. Many other teenagers say they feel the same anxiety. Mental health and resilience are also crucial challenges – besides physical safety – in Ukraine, Ana confirmed.

After the earthquake, Turkey fell back for some years regarding women and youth rights. One of the first decisions was to close universities to do the shelters. They remain closed until now. But – according to Ela – when is a crisis, there is an opportunity; she underlined the need to include young people’s voices in shaping public policies.

Donors need to empower young people.

According to young leaders, private donors should support building young people’s resilience. They need to move away from the paternalistic approach. They should listen (and hear) to these young people who are already doing so many things and give them power. Trust-based philanthropy for young people is needed. Foundations should change the funding practice to ensure that young people are included in implementing climate action. And not forget about mental health. As Ela Evliyaoglu said: Humans are more resilient than policies, and our policies and structures are more fragile than human beings.

Founders need to build partnership.

Civic engagement is becoming sustainable in Ukraine. The first months of the full-scale invasion showed incredible mobilisation of Ukrainian citizens. After six months, citizens started creating strategies, becoming civil society and unaware that they were ‘practicing civil society.’ Ukraine is entering a new stage: doing good things has become an everyday habit. The challenge is preserving these habits; international donors could help if they see Ukrainian organisations as partners.

These young leaders pointed the key messages which are the takeaways from the Philea Forum 2023: how democracy is emerged, more needs to be done for climate, strong demand for unrestricted funding and trust based giving, the need to put have human rights in the center and the need to support resilience including focus on mental health.

Vesna ended the discussion with a request: Don’t say young people are our future; they are our present. Only working together will help us to fight the challenges we are facing!

Magda Pekacka, Alliance regional representative for Central and Eastern Europe