It was great to have a visit from Stojan Petrevski and Ivana Stojkovska, two members of the executive board of Blue Sky in february.

Blue Sky is likely to become one of our most important partners in South East Europe and we were able to help them make contact other with potential partners in this country.

Ivana is a member of the launch team. Andrew Hadley, who started the Blue Sky network in 2001, said seeing it now working as a fully independent NGO run by young people was, “like seeing your own child grown up and making its own way in the world.”

For more information about the Blue Sky Network click here

Join up NOW

If you’re interested in international youth work and/or inclusion issues then this is a great opportunity and it won’t cost you anything.

We will be working with the British Council and SALTO-Youth in delivering the NOW seminar on inclusion policy and training.  The seminar will be in Liverpool from 14th to 16th of April. The event is aimed at youth work professionals and young people with recent experience of international projects.  Momentum’s main aim will be to energise and engage the young people through a number of creative fun activities including a ‘Big Brother diary room’.  We’ll also be helping to create an audio visual record of the event. Click here for a flier for the event.  To apply visit www.britishconcil.org/connectyouth-news . 

Feel free to pass this on to other people. 

Momentum have been asked by the British Council to carry out an interim evaluation of the European Union Youth in Action Programme in the UK. 

We’re delighted to be working with Maro Pantazidou on this.  Maro is a postgraduate student from Greece studying Participation, Power and Social Change at the Institute of Development Studies, University of Sussex.  As part of this evaluation Andrew and Maro recently visited Belfast, where they made contact with some fantastic young people and groups working there.  We’re using online surveys, focus groups and interviews with young people and professionals.  Momentum will be making sure that the voices and experiences of young people come through clearly in our final report.  So if anyone has experience of Youth in Action projects or has views about the programme we’d like to hear from you.

Please contact us before 26^th March.

In June 2010, Momentum director Paul Oxborough and two other enthusiastic motorcyclists will be starting out on an exciting and adventurous new project.  They will be embarking on a thrilling journey and working with a film production company to create a stunning international High definition TV series.  Here Paul tells us all about it.

We are embarking on an ambitious journey to travel 5000+ miles across 18 countries meeting outstanding young people and  visiting  youth projects that have done  amazing things in their own countries. We will do this on motorbikes over 28 days. It will be filmed for TV hopefully shown as 6 x 55 minute episodes in 2011.

We are negotiating film funding and sponsorship at present and the more people who are supporting us the more chance we have of making this a reality.

Our current position is we have the film crew, equipment and support vehicle in place, 2 of the 3 riders have been selected and we have support from a wide range of people/companies. This is going to take a lot of energy and support and knowing you are behind us will allow us to keep going when things get tough.

We launched a project website www.roadtomacedonia.co.uk  and this will link you to our Facebook  and Twitter pages. We need as many people as possible to register so at the very least visit the site and follow us on Twitter and Facebook. Regular updates will be posted as the project develops.

What is unusual is we aren’t asking for money to support the trip but we are looking for links to people who might be able to provide support with equipment. Most of this will be covered by companies making a donation but if you wish to offer some support make a personal donation see below.

To visit the donation page go to www.roadtomacedonia.co.uk/support.html If you know of a company or someone who can help please send them this information and encourage them to become a sponsor of this amazing project.

Visit the website www.roadtomacedonia.co.uk

Join our facebook fans page http://www.facebook.com/pages/Road-To-Macedonia/306013872941

Follow us on Twitter @roadtomacedonia