GénérAktion: your impact counts! - YOU:KO 2023 | Youth Congress: YOU:KO 2023 | bpb.de

The Youth Congress sees itself as a forum where young people from a wide range of backgrounds come together to discuss current, politically relevant issues under a specific motto and formulate goals and positions arising from them. The participants and thus the target group of the congress are young people with diverse backgrounds between the ages of 16 and 27.

In view of the commemorative event "60 Years of the Elysee Treaty", the Youth Congress 2023 focused on Franco-German cooperation and has been realized for the first time within the framework of the cooperation agreement between bpb and the Franco-German Youth Office (DFJW). For the first time, not only German but also French young people have participated. The working language during the preparations for the congress as well as during the congress was English.

The special feature of the Youth Congress is that it is a participative youth project. This means that young people are not only the target group, but the content and form of the congress is essentially determined by young people and they were involved in almost all planning processes. The preparatory team has been formed by numerous active volunteers of the participatory networks teamGLOBAL (tG), Young European Professionals (YEPs) and the Youth Jury of the Youth Democracy Prize (JDP) associated with the bpb – this year, of course, young people from France form about 50% of the preparatory team.