Friends of Youth Association for region of Goriska

The Inter-municipal Association of Friends of Youth for Goriška Region raises the quality of life of children, adolescents and their families through socially responsible programs, advocacy, awareness-raising, education, and the implementation of leisure activities. They provide children and adolescents with equal opportunities and a safe, quality upbringing into mentally stable, empathetic, responsible, creative, and critically thinking individuals. They help families to become capable of making responsible decisions for the common good and the quality of life of present and future generations. The problems of children and adolescents they are addressing are shortages in active-citizenship-related skills, the disregard of children in politics, the lack of opportunities for the healthy development of cultural values and quality leisure time. They organize camps and events for children to promote social inclusion of children and make their voices heard, such as the Children’s Parliament with a 30-year tradition. They also organize experiential workshops for the development of cultural and social values, workshops and weekly workshops for children and parents, summer and education camps. By this year over 21,000 children had been able to spend their holidays in their summer camps.

The association helps parents who are not well-informed to exercise parental rights and receive structural aid. They offer them free legal aid, inform them about other types of available aid and refer them to the competent institutions. Within the Trojka Family Center, parents are provided with, among other things, a safe and quality space for informal socializing, childcare and therapeutic camps for single-parent families. They provide education for more caring parenting, individual psychosocial assistance, as well as humanitarian aid.

Students, high school students and young volunteers within the Educators and Animators Club are provided with quality education, work experience and student internships in programs for children and adolescents in the local environment.

In the next three years the organization will further develop their programs by strengthening advocacy in the field of children's rights and educational programs for active citizenship. They will work towards changing the concept and the content of the school for parents. They will pay special attention to humanitarian programs to make them even more effective. By further developing the programs and the functioning of the association, they will strive to increase the visibility of the organization and become a strategic partner to local, national, and international organizations.