In late September, Stefan (new External Relations Officer) participated in EEB's Annual Events in Austria near Vienna.
The EEB (European Environmental Bureau) is Europe's largest federation of environmental organisations and the “environmental voice of European citizens”.
From 25-28 September about 50 people from all over Europe and very different organisations came together to decide on EEB's future and work focus as well as to meet each other to exchange knowledge, motivation and contacts.
Since we are one of only two youth organisations in the EEB pool, Stefan gave his best to represent the ideas and expertise of young people and especially of YEE.

Stefan got the chance to talk about YEE's experiences of working with the Erasmus+ program during a fundraising workshop which was part of the whole event. That brought us into the focus of everybody who was attending the EEB event and Stefan got into talks with other EEB member organisations' representatives who got interested in some cooperation or support with and from YEE and their youth parts.
That brought us a big step forward in the EEB member organisations' pool.

During the annual event the annual EEB conference also took place (first time outside of Brussels - in Vienna). Under the main aim From Sustainable Talk to Policy Walk open discussions took place with members and heads of European environmental institutes, initiatives and companies. Especially the session about Circular Economy (Walter R. Stahel gave a motivating, humorous but at the same time serious presentation and speech) brought the needed value and focus back to one of the most sustainable choices and acts we can do: fixing, remanufacturing, reusing goods (which we already have) instead of producing and using new ones.

Outside of the conference and the time of board meeting and Annual meeting of the General Assembly Stefan looked into different work groups of EEB and got a first understanding of how to get involved deeper and stay in closer contact with the EEB and the advantages we have by being a member organisation of it.

Stefan Rudel,

External Relations Officer

Photo by Jiří Dlouhý