Starting the LYNC

From 9th to 16th of October once again in the region of South Caucasus there was an attempt to trigger the youth interest in regional cooperation and tolerance. 6 trainers invited from Germany, whose purpose was to lead a group of young active representatives from South Caucasian countries (Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia) to creation of regional youth organization, which was initially called LYNC (Liberal Youth Network of South Caucasus). The seminar had two stages: on the first stage, from 9th to 11th October, two pre-seminars were organized paralelly in Armenia (Tsahkadzor) with trainers Maximilian Klefenz , Johannes Wolf and Sabine Weizel and in Azerbaijan (Novxani) with Frederik Ferié, Philip Hansen and Anna Catharina Müller, during which the groups of participants tried to draw out a draft overview of the future organization, its purpose, structure, action-plan, etc. On the second stage more than 25 participants were chosen from two groups, who met in Georgia (Bakuriani) on the 12th of October and continued working on the common idea till 16th of October. During the second stage the trainers helped the youth from Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia understand the possibilities that so called umbrella organization LYNC can give, the problems it can face as a dislocated working team. In this aspect it was quite useful to look through the experiences of other countries and regions, which also attempted to create regional umbrella organizations, but eventually failed. In this context for the participants it was quite useful to have a day of presentations of different tools of working in a team by Frederik Ferié.

On the first stage of the seminar, by the end of each day, two groups in Armenia and Azerbaijan exchanged video greetings and shared the summarized results of the day with each other. This helped to start immediate cooperation, when they met in Bakuriani. And already in Bakuriani the future LYNC working group members had their first voting on the steering committee formulation issues and particular points of the LYNC future action plan. By the end of the seminar the LYNC already had the following departments: fundraising, constitution, manifesto, organization, public relations and international relations. Each department now has its responsible member in the steering committee, which has already designed a common action plan with timeline for the upcoming year.

In December LYNC team had a four-days informal meeting in Tbilisi to review what had already been done, how effectively they worked, exchanged internal feedbacks and tried to clarify and implement new methods and technologies for effective communication and cooperation.

The South-Caucasian youth now works towards organizational affairs of local seminars, after which the LYNC team plans to have a joint seminar in Georgia again at the beginning of 2012.