Any effort of a city to invest into and learn from its young people is a good investment, we believe. More and more cities, mayors, local councils and public servants realise this.

We worked together for over 3 years with the actors of the youth ecosystem and the municipality of Baia Mare on a journey which reaches an important milestone tomorrow. Together we gave birth to the first application for the European Youth Capital of 2022. We created the Urban Youth Circle concept, and we are looking towards a 10-year strategic perspective. And we lost our bid to the title.

We got up together, we decided to move fast forward towards the European Youth Capital application for 2023. We co-created ‘PLAY’ as an overarching concept which aims to transform the local youth ecosystem and the processes supporting this transformation. We found partnership, creativity, dynamism, resilience and perseverance. And we went through this together with partners, barely even meeting in person for the last 12 months.

We added our knowledge and expertise gained through efforts in our hometown, Cluj-Napoca, in other Romanian cities in the framework of the Romanian Youth Capital programme, Com’ON, CIVIT and other local and national efforts. We learned about youth work, engagement, honesty and sometimes the hardship that young people are facing in general. And we had to chance to witness how much pressure and anxiety the COVID-19 pandemic put on the youth generation.

This effort allowed us to enhance the concept of the urban youth ecosystem, a concept which focuses on how young people become an organic part of the urban development process and on how youth organisations, youth support organisations and decision makers work together in creating youth friendly cities.

During this process, our team felt being adopted by young people, youth leaders, decision makers, we became “băimărean”. We wish to express our gratitude for being part of this process