LEAGUE OF YOUNG VOTERS NEWSLETTER #1 February 2014 As we agreed at the last capacity building in December, we will be sending a bi-weekly newsletter for the League of Young Voters to all national initiatives and co-branded youth campaigns. This is the first edition. As you can see, quite a lot is going on now that we are officially in elections year, and there is still much more to come! Here are the main points we want to share with you in this first edition. Should you want us to address any specific point in the next edition, let us know! The LYV Team Don’t forget to help us by spreading the LYV buzz on Twitter: @Youngvoters.eu Facebook page: youngvoters.eu
QUESTIONNAIRE: THE LEAGUE NEEDS YOUR INPUT!!! In the coming months, the League of Young Voters will aim to showcase itself as a pan-European movement, with its activities taking place across Europe, in cities and towns in all EU member states. For this, we need an overview of the activities that YOU will be running, so that we can promote these at European level and on our website and social media pages. In addition we will put your activities in a calendar, which you will find soon on a new page (under European actions) on the online platform. It is VERY IMPORTANT that you fill in the questionnaire! Link: https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/N7RNYK5
LYV AMBASSADORS CALL The League of Young Voters is launching a call for volunteer LYV ambassadors to help promote the initiative at national level. We are looking for young activists to help us engage with the online platform, motivate young people to discuss the issues at stake, and promote this through social media channels. We will coordinate the selection of ambassadors with the national branches and invite you to share the call within your networks! Link: http://www.youngvoters.eu/european-actions/issues/866 PRESS RELEASES In order to showcase your work as belonging to a large youth-led and panEuropean movement, we need to ensure that we communicate in a coherent way and with a common identity. For this, in the next edition of this newsletter, we will prepare some template common press releases that you can use to communicate your activities. We invite you to adapt it to your campaign and send it to your media contacts in your country!
A GENERAL UPDATE ON ACTIVITIES OF THE LEAGUE OF YOUNG VOTERS Study on “Addressing Youth Absenteeism in European elections” The study entitled "Addressing Youth Absenteeism in European Elections" that was done in collaboration with the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance has recently been sent to the publishers and will be made public in mid-February. The study looks at the typical young absentee, the causes of youth absenteeism and issues recommendations to address the problem. You will soon receive the study in your email in a PDF format. Preparation of Training for Young Candidates After early results of the joint study with Int. IDEA, it became apparent that young people are seriously underrepresented at the European Parliament. Therefore, the League partnered with the Center for Creative Leadership and EU40, the network of MEPs under 40, to host the first ever training for young MEP candidates from (hopefully) all EU Member States. The training is to take place in Brussels on 3-4 March and will include the training of skills that will strengthen the performance of young candidates during their election campaign. The training is open to all candidates under the age of 40 and a personal invitation will be sent in the coming days. Please spread the call as well to young MEP candidates in your network! Preparation of the League of Young Voters Web-experience The League, in cooperation with Generation Europe Foundation, has been writing the content for an online experience that will explain the European Elections to a young audience and will be published in 4 languages originally (EN, FR, DE, ES). The development of the game is on-going, with a release date of mid-March. Conceptualising the comparison of political party manifestos In parallel to the Web-experience tool, the League has been working on conceptualising how best to portray relevant youth issues from political party manifestos and programmes. This will be done through an online tool, also customised to mobile devices. The release date is set for late March. Shooting a Viral Video “Happy” The League of Young Voters in collaboration with I AM OTHER (production company) is filming a remake of Pharell William's "Happy" video that recently went viral. We have issued a call for recruiting young people as dancers and the video will be shot in Brussels on several weekends in February. See here for more information. Activities at the European Youth Event As the European Youth Forum is co-organising the European Youth Event with the European Parliament, the League of Young Voters will be present there with several activities. We will also need input from all LYV initiatives present to raise the visibility of our European movement. Mention your participation to the EYE in the questionnaire and we will contact you on the organisation of a common LYV activity!