G-2002 have participated in the international seminar “Challenges and opportunities for the youth to enhance stability in the Black Sea region: Development of the Black Sea Youth Network” organized by the Armenian Atlantic Association. (AAA).

The seminar started with the speeches of some representatives from AAA, NATO, Open Society Institute Assistance Foundation Armenia (OSI-AF). They presented the real situation (or from their organizations point of view) in the Black Sea region which was: 4 countries NATO members and 3 countries that showed their political interest in close cooperation with NATO (Moldova, Ukraine, Georgia). Also it has been said that almost all countries from the Black Sea region have a security conflict which need to be solved in order to get through the rest of the problems (economical, social, etc). At this point the discussions began among the delegations and we had the great opportunity to share information and our experience to others but also to gain knowledge in this specific domain (security issue). Some of the delegations tried even to propose certain programs and activities in order to make the idea of Black Sea Youth Network real.

In this way the NATO liaison officer Mr. Romualds Razuks presented a report about NATO’s Political and Military Transformation, and also about some specific concepts of NATO and their future implementation. He mentioned the great importance of cooperation of the countries (especially when solving regional security conflicts) but also the importance of civil society which has to construct and to maintain the peace where the role of the Youth is huge.

Another presentation was made by the president of YATA Harald Thorud who underlined one more time the importance of involvement of youth in developing of YATA in order to promote stability and security in the Black Sea region.

In the second part of the seminar we worked on the project of creating the Black Sea Youth Network. We established our goals and purposes and also some action steps which had to be done to develop the Network. The initiative was given to Romania because it had some experience in this domain. In this have been decided:

- To make a web site where all of the countries will have a special place to publish their own activities,

- To organize a project per year which will enlarge and maintain the idea of Black Sea Youth Network (each year one country will be responsible for it)

- Creating a yahoo group for further details of making the network available for others

As a conclusion we must say that it was a great experience for us and for others countries too, so our benefits from this seminar are:

- We exchanged information and experience

- We created new contacts for our organization and also we discussed some common projects with the delegation from Turkey, Greece, and Romania

- We realized a common project “The Black Sea Youth Network” which will be proposed for financial support

- We got new skills in team working

- Our organization is participating in a regional Network, and we are one of the founders.