Alpine Youth Meeting #3 Report

In the framework of youth.shaping.EUSALP, online meetings are organised once a month, where an EUSALP Action Group presents its work and where a topic related to EUSALP youth activities is discussed. The aim of these meetings is to allow young people interested in the youth.shaping.EUSALP activities to get informed, give their point of view on what is being proposed and further develop the tools and activities provided by youths.shaping.EUSALP.

The last Alpine Youth Meeting took place on 25th February 2021 and brought together about 15 young people from the 7 Alpine countries. At this meeting members of the EUSALP AG7  presented their work and some young entrepreneurs came to test one of their proposals. In a series of virtual meetings, they had already worked with the EUSALP AG7 on the implementation of a digital entry point, facilitating the connection with EUSALP partners.

The aims of this meeting was therefore to test the online tools for the youth.shaping.EUSALP activities and to present the digital entry point to the young entrepreneurs who had proposed this idea.

In order to break the ice and jump into this meeting full of energy, participants were questioned about very important matters. For its first time, Raclette lost the election of most popular cheese in the Alps.

This website was created to meet several needs related to the activities of youth.shaping.EUSALP:

Participants of the Alpine Youth Meeting were invited to test the website during 10 min and to evaluate it on a mentimeter presentation.

On the first image, the website’s evaluation gets an overall score of 3.8 out of 5 which is really encouraging for the team. It is the “design & look” as well as the “navigation & user experience” that received the most points. It is important to note that all the scores were above average.

In the second image, we asked the participants if the website meets the initial objectives. The results are positive about the main objective of the site which is to inform and connect to new participants, this point received a score of 4.1 out of 5. Significant progress needs to be made on the other two points, in particular on offering concrete action tools through this digital platform. We can say that this will be a line of work to develop with the future members of the Youth Council and the EUSALP Action Groups. The meet & share objective is achieved through two tools available on the website:

• The calendar of events related to the interests of young people in the Alpine region
• The blog that allows to spread information.

The last image corresponds to the suggestions of the participants to improve the website. Among the proposals, a forum would allow for a more direct exchange on the different topics of EUSALP. The question of moderation of this forum should be discussed beforehand in order to ensure the relevance of the contributions. Another proposal concerns the issue of translation of content. The youth.shaping.EUSALP team has chosen to publish most of the content in English, but some important information is translated into the 4 Alpine languages. We invite users to use a translation tool integrated in the web browser.

The digital entry point is a proposal made by a group of young entrepreneurs during an EUSALP Action Group 7 meeting. This tool should allow young people who have an idea for a project related to Action Group 7 to pass it on to Action Group members. 

It is still under development and will be tested by Action Group 7 before being extended to all EUSALP Action Groups.

Participants of the Alpine Youth Meeting were invited to read the reports of the two workshops where this idea was discussed, and then to test the digital entry point during 10 min in order to evaluate it on a mentimeter presentation.

On the first image, the evaluation of the digital entry point gets an overall score of 3.4 out of 5. This score invites us to continue working on this first prototype to improve it. Once again it is the “design & look” that gets the most points. The participants pointed out that there is still some important information missing that is adapted to the objectives of this tool. We need to think about how to provide relevant information in the future in collaboration with the projects realised in the Alpine region and other partners.

In the second image, we asked the participants if this tool meets their initial requests expressed in the previous workshops. The results are generally positive for a first version. The possibility to fill in a form to propose a project idea allows to fulfil the objective “Opportunity to exchange ideas and materials” which is a first satisfaction. The tools available on the website are also satisfactory when used for the digital entry point.

The third image allows us to check which missing tools the participants feel are necessary. The priority would be to create a “List of professionals for specific topic (biodiversity, ESS, peatlands) to know on who you can turn to for collaboration or help on specific topics”, followed by the creation of a tool to facilitate exchanges between young people and professionals, such as the forum proposed for the website. Moreover, also a “Market of initiatives” seems to be useful to the participants. A stronger collaboration with the online platform “Save the Alps“, which was developed in the framework of the French presidency of EUSALP, could be envisaged.

The last image corresponds to the proposals for possible improvements. Among the proposals, we notice that an important question has been raised about data protection and the ideas submitted on this digital entry point. We would like to remind you that every digital tool is checked by the data protection advisor of the Tyrolean government before it is put online. Each contribution will be checked by the youth.shaping.EUSALP team and then distributed in agreement with the owners of the contribution. Another important point raised is the usefulness and potential benefit for the young entrepreneurs who will contribute to this digital entry point. This point still needs to be clarified and should be the subject of a page on this online tool in order to be completely transparent. The last proposal about the having links to the EUSALP Action Groups seems important to us and will be realized in connection to the official website of EUSALP.