The first two Meet ups take place in Helsinki and Turku in August 2024. In the following years, four more Meet ups will be organized in Tampere, Rovaniemi, Lappeenranta, and Oulu.
DiscoverEU is an action under the Erasmus+ programme that offers 18-year-old Europeans an opportunity to travel by train in Europe for up to 30 days. The aim of the action is to increase young people’s possibilities to learn about Europe and its cultures, as well as to meet other young Europeans. The idea for such an action originated from an initiative of European youth themselves and DiscoverEU started in 2018.
The so-called DiscoverEU Meet ups are organized in all countries participating in the action. The Meet ups are low-threshold opportunities for young travelers to meet other European youth, to learn about the hosting country and its people and thus the meetings enhance the learning processes taking place while travelling. The Meet ups are aimed both at European youth currently traveling with their DiscoverEU pass, as well as at young people who have recently completed their adventure from the hosting country.
In the end of 2023, Youth Academy was selected to organize DiscoverEU Meet ups in Finland for the next three years, i.e. from 2024 to 2026. During the upcoming six Meet ups based on promoting non- and informal learnings, the participants will, for example, get to explore different cities in Finland, visit cultural and/or nature sites, sweat in saunas and taste some local foods and flavors.
Besides, there are some specific themes defined for each Meet up in Finland. These are related to the cities the meetings take place at: for example, nature and seaside culture in Helsinki, Turku as the oldest city of Finland, Tampere as the first industrial city of Finland, Rovaniemi as the Arctic Capital, Lappeenranta as the city on the border of Europe and Oulu as the European Capital of Culture (in 2026).
“Supporting the encounters of European youth and the learning cycle of DiscoverEU are exciting new responsibilities for us. Organizing the Meet ups provides us a new opportunity to make use of and apply our long-term expertise and knowledge in promoting youth participation, as well as to further develop the international dimension of our own operations, which is something we have been aiming to increase lately”, says Sanna Lindgren, International Affairs Manager at Youth Academy and the person responsible for organizing the Meet ups.
Meet ups in Finland are organized in co-operation with the Finnish National Agency for Education (EDUFI), which is the national agency for Erasmus+ and European Solidarity Corps youth programmes.
Read more:
DiscoverEU Meet ups on Youth Academy’s website
DiscoverEU website of the Finnish National Agency for Education (in Finnish)
DiscoverEU website of the European Youth Portal
More information on the Meet ups:
Sanna Lindgren
International Affairs Manager
sanna.lindgren@nuortenakatemia.fi
+358 40 082 7413
