A Look Forward: Heading to the Future

The future of every community lies in capturing the passion, imagination, and resources of its people.

Ernesto Sirolli

At 20 years old, EYP Finland has achieved a great deal of things and grown from small beginnings to a truly nation-wide organisation with a professional management culture, significant projects, and involvement with ministries and European institutions. At the same time we have remained close to our roots as a volunteer-based youth organisation, providing informal education and organising events by young people for young people.

The third strategy of EYP Finland, covering the years 2022-2025, builds from these foundations and aims to create an ever more inclusive and participatory youth organisation. According to the vision statement, EYP Finland in 2025 should be approachable, dynamic, professional, and educational. These main pillars reflect the very nature of EYP as an organisation that encourages its members to take an active role in society by providing them a safe and welcoming environment to learn and put into practice active citizenship.

Moving forward, we are taking with us everything we have learned from the first two decades and continue work-

ing on what we find important. Many of the practical steps that we intend to take in the upcoming years, such as improving our cooperation with schools and teachers, ensuring a low barrier of entry to our events, including active members and alumni at all levels of the organisation and across Finland, and encouraging members to apply their experiences to life outside of EYP, have been long-term strategic objectives from the very beginning but the COVID-19 pandemic brought them to renewed attention. Just like a house needs to be built on a solid foundation, doing these things well year after year ensures that future generations find EYP as interesting, inspiring and empowering as we did entering our first session. and abroad, today and tomorrow, will be forever grateful for the part that you have played in the organisation.

With this note we want to say thank you to all the readers that have made it this far. EYP Finland would not be where it is today without your contribution. EYPers in Finland Here’s to another 20 years, and hopefully many more to come.

20eypfi