Definition of a Young Person

organisations. For youth centres, there is another 650.000 euros available annually which is divided amongst 28 youth centres.

Recently Ministry of Public Administration took some action toward professionalization of the NGO sector, which also includes majority of youth organisations. In April 2018, the Law on Non-Governmental Organisations entered into force and one of the novelties that it established is the fund for the development of NGOs. Until now, it launched two calls for proposals (one in 2018 in one in 2019) to promote the development of NGOs and volunteering. The subject of the tender is co-financing of projects that will contribute to the development and professionalization of non-governmental organisations and volunteering in Slovenia. Within the selected projects, the Ministry is co-financing sustainable jobs in NGOs and sustainable jobs for volunteer mentors and volunteer coordinators. It should be mentioned that even if we could say that this is a positive change in (co)financing the NGO sector, we need to state that the resources so far have not had a major impact on the youth sector. In the first tender in 2018 only 16 out of 100 co-financed workplaces were assigned to youth organisations.

As a rule in municipalities with youth centres the vast majority of funding for Youth Work goes to them, which leaves other youth organisations financially malnourished. Where the youth centres doesn’t exist, the budget at the municipal level is usually very small or non-existent (often we are talking about few thousand euros for the whole municipality).

The programs that are financed by some national/international/regional project or by some other foundation are usually free for participants since tenderers often demand that services for young people should be free of charge. In some cases, the participants must pay reduced fee. There are also some programs or events that function as commercial and require a fee, but it is usually lower than other programs on a market (language or other courses).

Definitions of a “Young person” are in majority of structures/frameworks that exist in participating countries but notably in National Strategies for Youth, they are defined as persons from 15 to 29 years old. Poland had a slightly different approach in their last National Youth Strategy from 2003 -2012 wherea young person was defined as 15 –25 years old. That strategy is out of date, however, the new National Strategy for Youth 2020 – 2030 is in the process of adoption and there it is indicated that young persons are from 15 to 29 years old.

Poland has also an instrument of “Children and Youth Parliament” which includes young persons from 13 to 20 years old which is a project of the Polish government and by that does not represent formal or nonformal structure but from this information we have some data what (in form of age) they formaly recognise as young persons.