Young Friends of Earth Europe has a horizontal structure – there is not one person in control who sits at the top and dishes out the instructions. Instead, we collect information from our member groups and work collaboratively to produce campaigns and events that are useful and interesting for our member countries.
We are a movement created by young people, and run by young people. Young people are involved at every stage of our work, from planning and running the programme of our annual summer camp, to developing our long term campaign strategies and plans. We do this by bringing together and working with our national groups and individual youth activists from Europe.
Nearly everything is done by volunteers, who work with each other with a common goal and vision, from across Europe.
Our youth-led structure
The work, development and direction of the network and organisation is led by the Steering Group which gets elected annually, and supports member groups and dedicated volunteers’ groups.
How we work and Intersectionality
At our 2017 AGM in Austria, we adopted a manifesto produced by our Equality & Interculturalism working group. It was written to be an explicit statement of our values and principles as an organisation. It is a commitment to inform ourselves and our work, to challenge ourselves and one another, and to be accountable and conscious in our efforts to be a part of the change we want to see in the world.
In addition, in 2018 Young FoEE has put all its efforts to provide concrete training for our member groups on applying the intersectional framework in the activities and campaigns they run. It was a great first step to build confidence in our groups and individual volunteers. As an outcome of this work, YFoEE and its network of member groups and committed volunteers have created a Toolkit for Intersectional Movement Building.