ACTIVATE – OBESSU Study Visit in Latvia
The third Study Visit of 2014 took place in Riga, Latvia between 22nd and 23rd of November. “ACTIVATE – From local to national” is part of the Work Plan 2014 funded by the European Youth Foundation (EYF) of the Council of Europe. The overall aim of the Work Plan 2014 is to empower school student activists to gain the attitudes, skills and knowledge to engage in participation and democracy. Within this context and following the previous successful Study Visits in Kosovo (April 2014) and Czech Republic (July 2014), the focus of the two-day training in Latvia was on participation and capacity building, emphasising the importance of having strong links between local and national level. The event, hosted by the Riga Pupil’s Council (RSD) the organisation representing school students in Riga, and gathered six school student organisations from all over Latvia.
What is OBESSU? What does participation mean? How can we represent school students? Advocacy or lobbying? What elements do we need to make an organisation sustainable? To answer these questions, OBESSU Board member Giuseppina, Zsofia from our Pool of Trainers, together with Estel from the Secretariat, led the participants throughout an interesting journey, from the role of OBESSU to possible concrete action plans for further steps towards the creation of a Latvian national school student organisation.
The first day, after some group building activities, participants and OBESSU representatives designed their own organisation Facebook pages to get to know each other and to “visually” explain the structure, objectives and main activities/events/campaigns each organisation has been promoting over the past years. An interesting way to present OBESSU, to share information and to have an overview of the current situation of the Latvian school student movement.
This activity was followed by discussions and debates reflecting on the meaning of participation, the reasons why we engage in participation and on different levels of representation. Even though, there were several opinions on the table, participants agreed on some common good ideas.
On the second day, student activists had the chance to discuss and understand the differences between advocacy and lobbying, think about which methods participants are already putting in place and reflect on how to improve them. To do so, participants took part in a role game, where they had to set and implement strategies to address given situations. The activity ended in a round table with “representatives” of the Latvian student organisation, teachers, Ministry of Education and OBESSU, discussing and reflecting on important educational issues.
The second part of the day, was dedicated to the sustainability of an organisation and for that purpose OBESSU organised a successful auction. After discussing which elements are important to make a structure sustainable, the auction took place. Four groups, representing four student organisations, had to decide which elements are essential for this purpose, trying to get them and afterwards discuss why they preferred to buy “Students” and “General Assembly” rather than “Motivation” and “Financial means”, among others
This journey between OBESSU and the Latvian school student organisations ended with a deep reflection on concrete steps towards the establishment of a national Latvian school student structure. Currently Latvia does not have one, schools at local level have its own Student Councils but there are not stable contacts between them. OBESSU encourages the Latvian students to get organised, take part and engage in school student activism to fight for their rights.
