The Young Scot conference in cooperation with EYCA took place in Edinburgh from March 9 until March 12, 2011 with representatives from eleven countries (Spain/Aragon, Estonia, Russia, Serbia, Romania, Poland, Greece, Finland, Italy, England, Andorra).
Young Scot presented a variety of its projects and project partners to the participants of the conference and the EYCA member organisations also briefed each other in workshops about latest developments in their work. Every country attended the event with three delegates – one from the card organisation, one government or municipality representative and a young person representing cardholders. The young people’s assignment was to develop a strategy for the European Youth Card in 2020 – after having worked in groups, the young people introduced their ideas to the plenary.

The key activity of the conference was “speed dating” exchange of best practices, which led to working groups that defined future partnerships on projects. A pledging ceremony of cooperation took place at the end of the conference.
Among the key outcomes of the conference, participants have identified the need for a revised mission and vision of the Association as well as focus on work with local and regional authorities. A local branding of the card in cooperation with municipalities is benefical for young people as they can be involved in the negotiation of relevant, local discounts and also an advantage for local authorities who can involve their young citizens in decision-making. Many organisations found the system of a reward scheme very appealing and will implement it on national level. Several cards are planning youth research in cooperation with banks regarding financial services that can be developed for young customers.
On behalf of EYCA, we would like to thank the Scottish organisers for their dedicated work for the conference, the great evening entertainment with Scottish dancing and bagpipes as well as the thorough follow-up to the conference. Young Scot has uploaded all of the presentations, conclusions, videos, and contact details to the specially created Ning social networking site where participants can download files and take part in discussions with their new partners.If you are interested in any of the documents, you can also request them from the EYCA office.

Dear friends, dear colleagues,
 
With the conference in Amsterdam swiftly approaching, it seems that this is my last time writing as EYCA’s President.

The General Assembly this year will be a milestone because even though the conference lasts only two full working days, it will be probably more intense than ever before. The Association will revise all its key documents including the Statutes, the Quality Standards and the Graphic Chart. There is a great amount of work behind all these amendments from the Board and the office and it is crucial to read the documents in advance and come prepared. Even more so as part of the conference will be dedicated to the elections of the new Board and President.

All these changes in governance and management come as a natural consequence of the positive development of EYCA in the last years. The increase of the age limit to 30 years for cardholders has led to the logo re-design, which has given the card new opportunities for cooperation with partners. EYCA has established itself as a significant stakeholder in the European arena, first through its successful projects Europe for a Change, EYCAdemy and Trafo, and later on through shaping European youth policy and the involvement in the Youth on the Move initiative of the European Commission.

The European Youth Card has grown both in quality of its member organisations as well as the excellence and variety of services offered to young people. We have strengthened our cooperation with the Council of Europe within the Partial Agreement on Youth Mobility through the Youth Card as well as with our partner organisations ERYICA and Eurodesk.

Looking back it has been an amazing seven years. Like in an Oscar speech, if I were to thank all the people who helped me make my vision of the Association a reality, I am sure I would forget someone because there were so many. So the only thing I can do is to say: thank you all! Nevertheless, I would like to mention three people in particular – my two vice-Presidents Angela Dato and Jose Sousa, the office team in Bratislava and my friend, the EYCA Director Marcel Hagmann. Thank you very much for your support and work, for your ideas and constructive criticism, for your energy and enthusiasm.
 
Warm regards and I am looking forward to seeing you all in Amsterdam,

Wolfgang

The Greek member organisation has signed an agreement with the Ministry of Culture and Tourism, which makes it possible for cardholders to visit museums and archeological sites in the country with either a significant discount or completely free. In Athens, the special cultural offer includes institutions such as the National Museum of Contemporary Art, the Design Museum or the Jewish Museum of Greece. Other cities, which are part of the programme, are Thessaloniki (Cinema Museum), Alexandroupoli as well as some of the Greek islands (Crete, Andros, Lesvos). To find out more, search the EYCA discount database or find the full list on Trafo at http://trafo.eyca.org/articles/go-cultural-this-summer-in-greece/
Markella Peloponnisiou replaced Giola Dionyssopoulou as head of the National Institute for Youth.

Carnet Jove in Catalunya is celebrating its 25th anniversary with a major party in Barcelona and all cardholders are invited to the PortAventura theme park on May 7 and 8! There will be up to 30.000 people attending concerts but also a Hip Hop Space, a computer party, a movie preview, a motor space, basketball and much more. The Youth Card's Connecta't Program aims to promote the participation of cardholders, creativity, culture, European mobility, access to the professional world... Therefore, part of the celebration will also be exhibitions of the winners in different competitions in design, photography and comics. There will also be information about the program, grants, solidarity projects, Fair Trade and much more. For info go to http://www.carnetjove.cat/festa25anys/#/ca/informacio-general

James Wade has started at Young Scot in December as Business Development Officer and is actively developing relationships with new discounters.
Young Scot has received funding from the Scottish Government to redevelop the existing youngscot.org website. The new website will enable young people to collect 'points' using the card which can be then exchanged for 'rewards' on the website. This aims to encourage young people to participate in positive / healthy activities (for example: gyms, swimming, volunteering, youth clubs, healthy eating).

Cartao Jovem, the European Youth Card in Portugal, celebrates its 25^th anniversary with a series of fabulous events for cardholders:
-                Intra_Rail Live Trip: journey of a lifetime - accommodation in youth hostels with full board, rail travel, sports and recreation, with great programme for only 50 €, and the cardholders who win can bring a friend along for free!
-                Snow Trip Cartao Jovem: 5-day skiing holiday in Andorra-Vallnord in April including accommodation, skiing passes, ski rental and apres-ski parties.
- 25 special discounts such as 60 % off in museums and archaelogical sites, 30 % discount on subscription to magazines, 20 % off from tickets on intercity and regional trains, 15 % discount on youth hostels and much, much more. The Portuguese member organisation is also preparing the launch of the Youth Card for mobile phones. All the cardholders will have the possibility to subscribe to the Youth Card in Mobile through the Cartao Jovem website. They just need to put their ID or Youth Card number, followed by the upload of a photo. After the process is concluded they will have in their mobile (in multiple specific platforms but also in Java) a facsimile of the Youth Card and in Portugal, they can use it as a replacement of the physic one. The application will work in connection with news, events and main advantages (constant update) of the Youth Card and later on with all the local advantages (providing a geo-reference if the mobile phone enables it).

The Croatian Youth Hostel Association, the EYCA member organisation in Croatia, has launched a new website, which combines their two key activities – the European Youth Card and the youth hostels. The original web page www.euro26.hrwill be redirected to http://www.hfhs.hr/en/. There is a new joint project of the Croatian Youth Hostel Association and Jeunesses Musicales Croatia called KulturHI providing a discount for purchasing both (membership) cards at once instead separately. The co-brand consists of hi.euro card and the popular Croatian cultural card and next to all the youth hostel and European Youth cards discounts, young people can make big savings in most established cultural institutions in Croatia (20 – 100% discount on entrance fee in major Croatian museums, theatres, festivals etc.). Moreover, there are discounts in CD and DVD shops, discounts on musical instruments and equipment, discounts for participation in art workshops and much more.  Last but not least, cardholders are entitled to free entrance for all programmes organized by Jeunesses Musicales Croatia. To find out more, follow this link: http://www.hfhs.hr/en/membership/

The European Youth Card in Luxembourg joined the Wikitude World Browser, which is an innovative and informative augmented reality platform allowing you to discover what’s around you in a completely new way. By using the camera, simply hold up your smartphone and explore your surroundings. Wikitude will overlay the camera’s display and the objects you look at with additional interactive content and information. This new application works not only on an iPhone or iPad but also for Android, Symbian and Bada phones (Samsung, Nokia). To read more about this technology and other “wikitude worlds”, please go to this link: http://www.wikitude.org/en/overlays-2

Allianssi, the EYCA member in Finland, is in charge of the EU-Canada Youth Roundtable, which will take place in Helsinki either in late September or early October 2011. This two-day meeting will bring together about a hundred participants out of which two thirds are from Europe and one third from Canada. The first round of this event took place in Ottawa in December 2009. It. The Youth Roundtable is organised by the European Commission and its theme will be “participation”. Moreover, Allianssi is involved in preparing a Nordic Meeting to take place in Porvoo (near Helsinki) on May 25. The idea behind the gathering is that the participants will be civil servants and youth NGOs from different Nordic countries. They will present good practises in the youth field, which are not necessarily used in all the Nordic countries, so the European Youth Card scheme will certainly be one of them.

“New opportunities of training for employees in the petroleum industry”.
The main aim is to increase employability of people with low levels of training in the petroleum industry, to have access to more stable jobs and better pay.
 

 

Five years ago, CKM SYTS had already almost all university students covered with their ISIC university co-brand cards in Slovakia (there were contracts with 35 universities in Slovakia, with 2 universities missing only). That was THE time when they asked themselves – what we do next? Do we take a break? Do we retire at age of 35…?
It was then that CKM SYTS, the EYCA member organisation, decided to create a brand new co-brand card for high school students. The objective was to give high school students a tool they could use every day during their school year as well as during holidays. And so the challenging journey started with first 5 high school co-brand projects in Slovakia.

We included all we possibly could in one card. Here is the result: from one side it is ISIC card with all school and personal data and from the other side it is EURO<26 card with space for validation stickers. There is 4 kb Mifare chip inside each card. That allows students to use the card in all the public transport facilities in the cities as well as on all bus and train lines within Slovakia. And they get a 50% discount on every ticket! At the same time the chip in the card can be used in school canteens, for school attendance registers, as an access system and when buying electronic tickets via internet for culture or sport events.

And here are some results and experience we, the Slovak European Youth Card, would like to share with you:
1)    We realized that high schools are not universities! Not that we did not know difference before but we did not expect that co-operation with high school will be that exhausting – it really requires more time and much better back office set up and procedures.

2)    High schools kids really like the idea to have their own ID cards and they are proud to use them ... and if they do not have a discount they WILL tell you!

3)    We found out that the ITIC (International Teachers’ Identity Card) is a very good door opener for us on high schools. We have developed the ITIC chip card for teachers and added many valuable local discounts to it. And when teachers are pleased with their cards what do you think they will tell their students?

4)    We now have more then 100 schools issuing our ISIC/EURO<26 cards to their students and the card becomes more or less a must for students that start in the first year! Most of the schools also issue ITICs for their teachers.

5)    We expect to grow to app 350 high schools in Slovakia within the next 2 – 3 years and have at least 50.000 high school students using our cards every day!

Office update
The EYCA office in Bratislava has successfully passed the annual ISO 9001:2008 certifying the quality management system implemented.
Wim Bovendeur conducted the internal financial audit and the external financial audit was performed by Anton Schimmel from Aqounta, the Netherlands.
 
In January 2011, President Wolfgang Schick took part in a full-day planning meeting with the EYCA staff members in Bratislava.
 
Marcel Hagmann participated on behalf of EYCA in the Directors’ meeting of the Three Networks together with Anja Ruhland from Eurodesk and Davide Capecchi from ERYICA.
 
In February, Marcel Hagmann met with Fiona Blacke from the National Youth Agency in England to discuss future developments of the Euroepan Youth Card and conducted a quality visit to EURO<26 Switzerland.
 
EYCA had been advertising for its Director position starting July 1, 2011. The recruitment process is now closed and interviews with candidates will be conducted in April.

EYCA news
Based on the recent online voting we would like to announce that Student Benefits Limited has been accepted as an Associate EYCA member for the territory of Ireland. This decision will have to be formally adopted at the General Assembly in Amsterdam in June 2011.
 
EYCA has been actively involved in promoting the EU-China Year of Youth, which is an initiative of the European Commission and the All China Youth Federation. As part of the projects, young Chinese people coming to Europe can purchase the European Youth Card for a special prize online. EYCA also includes communication about the EU-China Year of Youth in its communication channels through websites and social networks. To find out more please go to http://2011euchinayouth.eu
 
The latest EYCA Board meeting took place in Brussels on February 11-13, 2011. We would like to thank Krzyzstof Lisek (MEP) for his invitation. While in Brussels, the EYCA Board met with Gregory Paulger (Directorate-General for Education and Culture, Director of Youth and Sport) and their colleagues Sergej Koperdak, Nicolle Raven, Giorgio Guazzugli Marini, Frode Dal Fjeldavli to discuss the development of the Youth on the Move (YOTM) card. During the Board meeting, the main focus was the preparation of key documents for the annual conference and General Assembly including the Statutes and the Quality Standards. The Board members also discussed membership issues.

Together with the Ministry of Youth and Sport (MoYS) and the National Bank of Serbia, EURO26 Serbia Association is developing a project called European Youth Debit Card, which incorporates the EYC benefits with all advantages of a payment function through the DINA card scheme (national payment system). This project is in line with the National Strategy for Youth that is being developed by MoYS and with National Strategy for the implementation of European Youth Card in Serbia that has been agreed upon in between MoYS and EURO26 Serbia Association. The final outcome will be the launch of a common project – the European Youth Debit Card – targeting the youth population.

The card will be offered through the channels of the National Bank of Serbia to all banks that are interested in providing services for this segment of the population. Parallel, the EURO26 Serbia Association will be running a set of workshops in Youth offices throughout Serbia, on faculties and secondary schools, that will be dedicated to teaching young people about responsible management of finances, ways of usage of debit cards, etc. The speakers will be representatives of National Bank, MoYS and staff members of the banks that will be participating in the programme.

The first phase of this project, conducted from January till March 2011, was to run workshops in Youth offices across Serbia and get an idea how do young people perceive payment cards, the European Youth Card and to learn what would be the best ways to introduce this new project on the market (from the perspective of a young person). The project partners are now summing up the results of the workshops and in the meantime, concluding the card design.

On March 29 and 30, 2011, Marcel Hagmann and Stani Gajdosova paid a visit to the EURO<26 office in Ukraine where they held meetings with Victor Generaliuk, the Director of the EYCA member organisation as well as their partner organisations.

The visit included an appointment at the State National Reserve museum "Sophia of Kiev" for the re-signing of discounter agreement; a business lunch with Roman Ponomarenko, president of Hostelling Int. Ukraine as well as an encounter with Yuriy Hodariev, manager of the partner travel company "Kyiv Sputnik".

EURO<26 Zarevo cooperates with various partner organisations, most of them national youth organisations, issuing a co-branded membership cards for the partners. One of the current projects of EURO<26 Zarevo are study visits for more than 100 young people to France, Catalunya and Italy, which are going to take place in June 2011.
EURO<26 Zarevo is operated from an office close to Kyiv’s city center. Young people have the possibility to order the card online or purchase it directly in the office.

There are around 1800 discounts available in Ukraine. Among the top 10 discounts are a 100% discount and 50% discount to two UNESCO-heritage orthodox cathedrals (and surrounding sites) Sophia Kyivska and Kyevo-Pecherska Lavra. There are also several restaurants and food chains, museums, cafes and a cinema.
The summary report about the visit as well as the recommendations by the EYCA office to the Ukrainian card have been sent to both the member organisation as well as the Board.

The 2011 EYCA conference will take place in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, from June 18 until June 20. Participants will be arriving on Saturday morning and the conference will start with lunch followed by the introductory session “a year in review”. The  card organisations will have working sessions both on Saturday and Sunday to discuss the changes in key documents such as the Statutes, the Quality Standards and the Graphic Chart. The General Assembly will take place on Sunday afternoon. Monday is dedicated to the exchange of good practice in the bazaar as well as an address by an expert speaker.

Amsterdam will live up to its reputation as a city with a lot of culture and night life! Be prepared for a canal cruise through Amsterdam by night with dinner and a theater performance during the Holland Festival. The exciiting new hotel that we'll be staying at offers a roof-top terrace for parties. More teasers to come shortly!

Also coming up:
- Youth on the Move expert meeting, Brussels
- quality visit: Andorra
- meeting with Spanish regional cards and INJUVE in Mollina, May 5, 2011
- EYCA Board meeting in Mollina, Spain, May 6-8, 2011