Generazione Lucana is an association that works on Youth Policies. But, GL hasn’t always been existing, and this is the story of how it came to be.

It all started with a cup of coffee. In Italy, coffee break is a way to talk about everything and we, a group of friends, used this time to meet young people around Basilicata: a region of southern Italy.

We ask to all of the people we met ‘’what our country need to be a youth friendly country?’’. There are a lot of answer to this question and we want to give value to each one.

For this reason, we’ve created the very first informal meeting of young people living in Basilicata.

During this meeting, we had the opportunity to know each other, discuss the problems and draw up a manifest: ’’Impegno per la Basilicata” which means “commitment for Basilicata” and is a document that express the engagement for making Basilicata a youth friendly country.

A  lot of people, organization, decision makers and policy makers sign the manifest to express their support. You can sign this document online and being part of this process too! Open this link https://www.generazionelucana.it/

During these years we have met administrators, associations and young people throughout Italy, built projects together and involved them in the process. For this reason we have decided to found ‘’Generazione Lucana’’.

Thanks to this experience we build a dossier: a book that collects all the ideas and political strategies of every young people that we met. The dossier, devised with teams of experts and young Lucanians, have been brought several times and continue to be brought to the attention of local, regional e national government institutions and administrators; in order to build a new season of youth policies for southern Italy.

Within a few years… we’ve moved from a local cup of coffee to the European parliament!

In fact, we’ve been selected as one of the most influent organization in youth policies themes among Europe. We took our ideas around the world and we had the opportunity to see different realities struggling with the lack of youth participation. So we asked ourselves how we can improve young people’s civic engagement and youth involvement.

Then we thought that a game could be a good solution. Together with other associations, e-learning experts, actors and the GL’s creative team, we have built ”Regenerace2049”: the first online and offline serious game of active citizenship in Italy. Find it at this link https://www.regenerace.generazionelucana.it/

In order to respond to one of the needs we have encountered most frequently in these years, we worked in partnership with the Municipality of Matera to build ‘’HubOut’’: a creative and co-working space for young people.

Indeed, one of the latest project of Generazione Lucana is ‘’CHLaYdoscope’’ that aims at supporting the development of Community-based youth leadership (YCLs) through an innovative mentorship and non-formal education program. Working in a European context reminds us how often young people and organizations fight for the same goals even if they live in different countries.

We’ve tell you only a few pieces of our story but there’s much more.
Thank you all for your attention and join us in this process!