Why did I miss my nephew's 1st birthday to go to the youth conference?

Every September I'm spending 5 days in Krusevo, Macedonia. Why?

Organization called Youth Alliance in organizing the biggest networking event for the young leaders from 16 countries, a conference called "European Values for the Future of South-East Europe". 

Sounds cliche, right? But no, it isn't a cliche. It's everything except that. 

This year I accepted to be involved in the organization of the conference more than ever, which means spending more time with eminent speakers, facilitating workshops, and the most important, my voice matters. For all that, I'm very grateful to Metodije Stojceski and Biljana Stojceska, founders, and organizers of this conference. They've been listening to my observations and my advice and I can say that together we've grown a lot for this 3 years.

Speakers at the conference were really big shots if I can say so. From Stjepan Mesic, ex-President of Croatia and the last President of the Presidency of Yugoslavia, Charles Edmund Garret, UK's ambassador in Skopje, Lence Ristoska, a spokesperson and prosecutor at the Special Prosecutor's Office in Skopje, Jeta Xharra, the executive Director and Editor of BIRN Kosovo, Marija Bulat, my friend, Secretary General of the National Youth Council of Serbia and many others. 

I was especially inspired by few speakers, such as Andrei Popescu (for me the best speaker at the conference), State Secretary for Youth Affairs in the Ministry of Youth and Sport in Romania, Stefanos Loukopoulos from Vouliwatch (Greece), guys from POdLeZNO (Bulgaria) and others. I enjoyed in almost 2 hours discussion with Todor Yalamov about the usage of games in education, Nathan Koeshall from Catalyst Balkans showed us the examples of social changes made on Balkans in recent past. 

But what is really inspiring are participants. Imagine having 50 young leaders from 16 countries in one place for 5 days? Mindblowing! 

You just don't get a chance to seat and drink vine with Stjepan Mesic at 01:30h in the night!

What I found the most interesting is that I'm an inspiration for them, too. While exchanging experiences with participants and speakers I can see that I've done so many thing nobody else did. And it's a sort of a breakthrough. I'm living in a beautiful, but small city called Pirot, famous by youth work, but nobody here is really aware of how huge things we did and things we are doing really are.

I had a chance to facilitate 2 workshops on the topics I really like:

1. Digital Darwinism - businesses need also to evolve because of technology

2. Social Change & Entrepreneurship in the Balkans vs Rural Youth on the Cutting Edge

Also, I was in charge for the social media, so here are some of the results. Quite ok, right?

If you want to be one of the participants at the next conference, follow Youth Alliance and apply!

p.s. find all videos from the conference HERE.