The TPirana Gang-Issue 1

of the 2nd International Forum of EYP Albania

NEWSPAPER

2012Issue#1

The Newspaper of the 2nd International Forum of EYP Albania 2012, Issue#1

We’re here, we’re in Albania! I realise that for most of you this isn’t that spec-tacular as there are a

lot Albanians present at this sessions, but for foreigners travelling it’s quite an experi-ence to travel to Albania. This country hasbeen kind of isolated for a very long time and this has as result that travelling to Al-bania means travelling to the unexpected. What do we know about Albania? I’ll be honest with you; I had no idea how Albania would be like before I came here. But boy, am I excited!

Tuesday we had a fun day of teambuild-ing and it was one of the most spectacular days in my life. I’ve never seen something that close to a tropical storm. I would also like you all to have a minute of silence now for the many dogs that accompany us dur-ing this session, which may have gotten in-jured during this storm.

Wednesday we officially kicked of thesession with the opening ceremony. We had to honour to listen to the very spon-taneous speech of the vice-rector of the university and the inspirational speeches of the Head-Organisers and our session president Tiago Correia Machado. We may all be idiots through the eyes of Tiago, which he mentioned in his speech, but in

EYP we’re all idiots. That’s why they alwaysfinish the opening ceremony with the Eu-ropean anthem, because at least it makes us look serious idiots.

Now the rest of the session is in front of us. How will you all write your resolu-tions? How fierce are your attack speechesgoing to be? What will we all learn about this mysterious country through the ses-sion? We’ll make this session legendary in a way that only idiots can!

Kick Ofby Matteo

4


My passion is a passion for the country where I come from: Belgium. To outsiders, the love for a country may

sound very usual, but for Belgians it isn’t. I’m pretty sure that we’re one of the only countries in the world where the citizens have such a passive attitude. Belgians usu-ally either don’t care or despise their coun-try. But to fully understand the latter, you will need to know some background his-tory.

Through the years, the territory ofpresent Belgium has belonged to many dif-ferent countries like the Roman Empire, France, Germany, Spain, Austria and TheNetherlands. All these changes have lead to the fact that people in the north of Belgium now speak Dutch (the Flemish) and people in the south of Belgium speak French (the Walloons). Stimulated by the trend of na-tion states (that focussed on people from the same race) during the 19th and 20Thcentury and the fact that most of the power in Belgium used to be in the hands of the French speakers, the Flemish revolted and demanded more autonomy.

All these things lead to the fact that Belgium is now a federal state and that there’s no inequality anymore between the Flemish and Walloons. Flanders is actually

more prosperous than Wallonia these days. To an outsider it would look that the Flem-ish finally got what they wanted, but somethings are not how they look like. There isstill a large group of Flemish that wants to split up Belgium in order to make Flan-ders an independent country. An example of their arguments is that Flanders could do even better if they didn’t have to think about Wallonia anymore and the weakest argument of all: that Flemish and Walloons are too different to be in one country eventhough it’s just a matter of language.

The separation of Belgium would beawful, at least through my eyes. It would endanger the position Belgium and more specific Brussels has in the EU and it wouldset a bad example for other countries in the world. If people in a small country like Bel-gium can’t even work together, then what does this say about big countries like Italy or Spain where we can also find separatistsgroups? Not to make a political statement, but an independent Catalonia would be more logical than an independent Flanders. The difference is that the only differencebetween the different groups in Belgiumis the language, whereas in Spain the Cata-lans don’t only have a different language,but also a different culture and historicalbackground.

The chance that Belgium will separate

becomes bigger with the year and if Bel-gium doesn’t exist anymore I would have to look for a new passion. Maybe I could become a dolphin swimmer or maybe I could become an engineer. I can tell you one thing for sure, I wouldn’t find it inFlanders.

Passion Articleby Matteo

5


Many of the articles and discussions we read or have in EYP or gen-erally tend to suggest that there is a direct

relation between the real participatory power of young people and their readiness to get involved in the political process and public policies. This can mean all sorts ofthings, such as voting rights from a lower age; learner-centred policies in education and thus real participation in the devel-opment of school and higher- education curricula; participation in the creation of public spaces in urban areas and rural development; involvement in social and environmental programmes. What is the key to understanding the power aspect of the participation of young people in public policies and how do they perceive the con-cept of citizenship?

Citizenship is a wider concept than a legal or civil status and is linked to peo-ple’s willingness and ability to actively participate in society .Also, citizenship is no longer limited to the structures of the nation-state but is performed when citi-zens take responsibility in their relations to a wide range of private and public institu-tions. Applying the broader approach to citizenship, a concept of constructive social participation is developed. It encompasses various social actions. To name just a few: formal voluntary work, informal commu-nity networks, informal political action, awareness-raising, altruistic acts, and car-ing work at home and the community, through which young people ‘participate in their communities and influence policiesand practices in the world around them’

People of all ages usually do not iden-tify with the concept of citizenship. Citi-zenship learning, however, and, more im-

portantly experience needs to be imbedded from a young age. Real value needs to be placed on the pride associated with to citi-zenship in order for people to feel a sense of identity, and ownership of their roles as citizens. Most often, citizenship is associ-ated with “national identity” or limited to belonging in the most formal sense, such as being born as a X-country citizen or be-ing granted citizenship, rather than being an active member of a community. Thereis no current regular means of tracking levels of understanding and behaviors of young people relating to citizenship. Nor is there a common understanding of what “participation” is – it is sometimes linked to politics, which is seen negatively by many young people. Negative associations with politics exist because of its complex-ity, perceived lack of appeal/relevance, and personal negative experiences. Inland or wider corruption of the political scene as well as unmeritocracy combined with high unemployment rates cause youth absten-tion from taking part in political or social procedures.

Many young people do not participate in formal politics because they don’t feel empowered to make a difference. Thereare a number of reasons why: they feel they don’t have enough information or un-derstanding of political parties and how to vote or register to vote, they lack informa-tion on opportunities to get involved in po-litical or community activity, take part in consultation, or take action to address their concerns, they don’t see any point in par-ticipating, because they don’t think their participation will make a difference.

Getting on the active zone though means that young people truly get in the game and have their voice heard, be it in the fields of a political party or not. Sharing

experiences, troubles and opinions is one of the keys to achieving not only understand-ing and personal sensitivity for issues, but also active citizenship. Following this, At European level, initiatives have been taken to further these objectives:

The Youth in Action Programme(YiA) funds projects which are designed to encourage a sense of active European citizenship in young people and encourage young people to become more involved in the democratic process at regional, na-tional and European level. Such organized projects are been taken on by young peo-ple, even informal groups of youngsters who feel like sharing viewpoints and creat-ing common ground with other peers from other countries.

In order to improve access to informa-tion, the European Youth Portal – which was set up as a direct consequence of the White Paper – is designed to help young people who are living, learning and work-ing in Europe. It provides European and national information on 31 countries in 24 languages and allows young people to voice their opinions through on-line discussion forums, and to have their questions an-swered through the Eurodesk Network. Through the later one, information con-cerning European education or relevant cultural affairs are made open and acces-sible to anyone.

Be active, inspire, get inspired and try as much not to get discouraged by nega-tive shortcomings. And for the end, as the motto of a YiA project which I participated in goes, it is really advisable sometimes to go beyond your borders and open to soci-ety and any activity you are personally in-terested in, be it politics or topics of social interest.

Engaged Citizens Of Young Ageby Dimos

6


Village is by definition aplace, most often rural,which is inhabited by a relatively small number of people. EYP comes again

however to give a new side on the basic term; Even if today was the first time youvisited a Eurovillage of the EYP, the mem-ory, or better stated, the taste of it will most probably follow you for a good amount of time. Since you’ve become eurovillagers, you now can brag to your friends about your new gastronomy skills or just show them pictures of you dressed in the colors/flags/accessories of other countries.

Things to mention and highlights:1. Impeccably big amount and variety

of food by Albania 2. Classically great Italian salami and

ham varieties 3. Cool music by the Dutch delegation

alongside with their unique stroopwaffelsand sweets

Hope everyone out there who is reading that now has their unique top tastes from today’s Eurovillage! Based on the principle of food sharing, be all sure to bring good food again each time you represent your country in some EYP session. Keep calm and carry on eurovillage-ing!

Eurovillage Timesby Dimos

7

This article is just a quick interview with Tiago. Just so you guys can learn a bit about him!

– “What is your general opinion on this forum so far”?

“Umm, you started with the tough questions already. Fair enough. I have mixed feelings but I think they’re mostly good. I think what I said this morning at the opening is probably the easiest way to summarize it. It’s not a huge forum but it’s a long lasting one but I think we can do something definitely good with that,meaning we will have just about the right number of people and we have just about the right time to scratch off the surface andto actually go to a more interesting level of group work and bonding amongst the peo-ple. So the right word to describe it its posi-tive, that’s the word positive.”

– “How are you liking Albanians & Albania in general?”

“Well Albania is a place I haven’t got much of a chance to see it. Well the Alba-nians I have met in general they are really nice. They are very accommodating. Wel-coming but also very accommodating of your request & your needs. If you tell them that you have to do this, you understand it’s going to be difficult, they think about itfor two seconds and they say yes we can do it. It’s a very cool thing to see, of course that would be Albanian EYP– ers. The rest ofthe population I haven’t really met them.”

– “So we are going to talk a bit about

your personal experience in EYP. Tell us about you first session.”

“My very first session is the nationalselection conference in 2003, 3rd of No-vember to the 5th of November. I was 17. It was a small session in Lisbon, organized in a very different format. EYP Portugal backthen it was not as developed as it is now.”

– “You can also tell us about the firstsession you presided.”

“After a break from EYP I started tochair again. One day in 2009 my good friend from Switzerland, Catherine, for-warded me a call for chairs. She just said: “Let’s do it?” I said: “Yeah let’s do this!!!”

After I applied and got accepted as achair, I got an email from the president saying that he needed a vice president and asked me if I would like to be his VP. I ac-cepted that invitation. A week later I got an email from the head organizers saying that the president canceled and I was going to be president. I was really thrilled but little bit confused. I have to admit I was literally babysat by my two VP. They did all the dirtywork. I just gave speeches and waived.”

– “What are you famous for in EYP?”“I am obsessed with circles, perfect cir-

cles. Everyone knows that! I also am well known for presiding too many sessions. I am not self– promoting myself here but I will illustrate with an example. During a speech for 25th anniversary the executive director stated that we have approximately 120 sessions per year. This meant EYP haslike 120 presidents per year. But then he said in front of 400 people: “Well, we just have 60 presidents per year because Tiago

presides the other part of the sessions”Magda says that I am also famous for

travelling with a lot of luggage and having a lot of stuff, clothes. She says that I havemore hair products than her. That’s abso-lutely not true! I have 3, she has 4.”

Flash questions!!!Chair, Jorno or Orga? “Chair”White or dark chocolate?“The darkest possible”Cats or dogs?“Dogs”Vodka or tequila?“Tequila”Lord of the Rings or Harry Potter?“Harry Potter”Justin Bieber or Rebecca Black?“Justin Bieber”Pokemon or Digimon?“I am too old for this!”Gym or Jogging?“Gym”

So guys that’s it for the interview! Thisis just a little bit from what we could learn about Tiago but anyone who’s interested can go and ask him personally. But beware you have to make an appointment with him before you can talk to him… He’s ex-tremely busy!!!

By the way there was the last question I asked to Tiago but he deemed the ques-tion and the answer inappropriate for the newspaper. Even though I begged on my knees and put my sad puppy face on he still said no! :)

Interview With ThePresident Tiagoby Willred

The Newspaper of the 2nd International Forum of EYP Albania 2012, Issue#1 8


It has always been fun to watch Delegates wondering if they came to the right place as they think of getting serious and discuss their committee top-

ics rather than teambuilding, in other words, playing games. However tak-ing it to a different view was not inour plans. Yesterday we, as the press team were trying to decide on a theme and title for the issues but as you may guess it is serious stuff. We made somebrainstorming threw some ideas and at a point we apparently freeze for around half an hour. After wastingthe time by making so much pressure on our brains; all of a sudden, Dimos said, “Why don’t we mix up and call it ‘Pirana Gang’ simply”. We all stared at him for a while not because we don’t understand the name like you did but we weren’t able to find the connectionbetween piranha’s and the issue. By the time, as he understood that we don’t get a thing he enlightened us that the name is read as Piranha but written like ‘Pirana’ with a T combined in P. At that moment the faces of poor lit-tle Delegates came to my mind (with-out any offence) and I said, “We maydo a questionary about the title, I’ll go for it”. So the journey started I talked to the chairs of the committees one by one and they hopefully accepted my request of asking the comments of Del-egates on ‘What could be Pirana gang?’ Last but not least, we have done the questionary part, collected the answers

and started reading them so here’s what people say. (I will combine some of them in case to put less but detailed statements)

From simplest to most confusing:- What is this? => Right at a point

but you have to be more creative.- Piranha => Fair enough if you

don’t have any idea.- Wild dancing style => Wish it

was Gangnam Style.- Something may concerning Ma-

fia => Already scared by the way mafiais written. (with uppercase)

- A group of musicians => Hope-fully not.

Here we go with the most compli-cated one that is created by combining eight post-it’s stating the same point.

- A dangerous, strange, undefeat-ed, violent, deadly, aggressive, brutal, criminal organization/gang which is consisting of murderous fishes existedsince Piroña (a fish) => Thanks to allwho made this possible with the most creative and extraordinary adjectives a person can put to a word.

Lastly the most possible answer that we were expecting from you turned out to become the least possi-bility to be thought, to clarify, only one person has written this lovely state-ment that is selected as the best post-it by me, myself and I. To whom it may concern, we love you too. I want to fin-ish this part with a quote that I wrote, which I think will generally explains

what ‘We’ did above.

“It’s not the places that makes the fun, ‘Basically’ It’s people in it.”

-Hamdi Kerem Küçükengin-

The PiranaGangby Hamdi

9

by Hamdi


Under the skies of a rather gloomy weather, the com-mittee on Regional De-velopment (aka REGI) met for the first time in

Durres, targeting to shed some (sun)light on the topic of urban buildings manage-ment. When the objective is to give new flair in old buildings and to come in parwith the growth of infrastructure, as their topic reads, EU can take a share of respon-sibility in order for seemingly wrecked, yet history enticing, concrete structures of yesterday to find their new position in theworld of today and tomorrow.

As a matter of fact, Europe is a heav-ily urbanized place whose population is by vast majority living in cities, the traditional boiling points of commercial and social activity. The need for efficiency though is always imminent, especially in terms of en-ergy. In parallel, the wish for history and culture preservation remains in the ideal priorities of modern societies.

Buildings that belong to cities and once satisfied the needs of commercial orsocial activity life are seen differently bymodern day city inhabitants; From the one side, there are the ones who claim that what expressed the needs of the past should stay back or even be demolished for

something else better and modern, maybe more efficient too, to take step forward.What remains as an unanswered question though is the allocation of financial powersto make the transition to the modern era. In the fiscal times of economy, the costs ofevolving or modernizing urban landscapes are often a discouraging factor for adminis-trative regions or individual entrepreneurs to go forward with improving urban infra-structures, especially in the case when older infrastructure practically and easily ‘’still does the job’’.

All things are not straightforwardly one-sided for the other side too, the ones who stand for the preservation of old build-ings, as an action of cultural heritage pres-ervation and continuation. Modern times insist more on re-integration or adaptation to new parameters rather than romantic approaches. The key is to find the balanceon this particular pair of scales; Moderni-zation in terms of advanced workability in the progressive formation of city landscapes and respect for the sites that comprise a big part of the city’s ID and evolution.

Having addressed the issue, EU has taken actions with such dimension; TheRegional Policy of the European Union is centered upon seeking advancement and sustainability, since the progress of the

heavily urbanized formation lies logically on the advancement of urban amenities. A framework for sustainable cities also exists, so does the term ‘’Urban Regeneration’’ which surely will affect not only the dis-cussions of the REGI committee, but will also define the future of the meaning of ‘’lebourgeoisie’’.

Old Building and The Cityby Dimos

12


Unemployment, uncertain-ty and biased professional choices; Taking a look at the modern labor market of Europe could be rather

discouraging. In times of financial crisis,job vacancies are becoming extinct for a generously big amount of modern Europe-ans. Other than that and especially for the younger generations, there is nowadays the tendency of choosing education degrees or generally education paths on the basis of professional prospects. The better potentialof finding a job is, the more probably some-one would pick that specific line of educa-tion to follow.

The newly formed committee on Em-ployment and Social Affairs consists ofyoung people who are aware of that situa-tion. However, EMPL goes further than this and gets to examine the role of the Europe-an Union in shaping its policies concerning labor market and education. Objective is a better and more fruitful confrontation with the issue, resulting in the assurance of free personal will when it comes for citizens to become of some certain profession.

EMPL also takes notice of another interesting fact which could sound like a paradox; amidst the high unemployment rates, there are labor market stakeholders

that complain about not having as many workers as they wish. That discordancebetween demand and offer shows the needfor more efficient knowledge and under-standing in regards of the modern status of job market. It also points out that people nowadays, should face the possible vola-tility in their career life more imminently than every past generation.

The European Union is directly or indi-rectly correlated with programs or meters that seek to inform and guide citizens in the mazes of today’s market of professions. The EVS projects for example offer chancesfor work which, even partially paid, paid or unpaid, creates working experiences inside Europe. Life-long learning programs also exist, targeting to the improvement of ex-isting job prospects, mobility within EU and facilitation of profession choice

The keyword is adaptation; Adaptationto adaptation, meaning that one should be ready and willing to progress alongside with the advancement of job market; that accepted, there will likely be a decrease in the employment mismatch, leading to a better and more positive future for the Eu-ropean labor market.

Redefining and UnderstandingEmpoyment

by Dimos

13


Getting serious about Syria: How can the European Union help the country and its people uphold human rights without

breaching the international law principle of territorial integrity or otherwise promoting a relation or further dependence?

To be honest, I’ve always loved being in a committee that discusses of the Humani-tarian issues so I would simply say: “Love the one, who loves like you” I don’t have any idea what you get from this phrase but what I get is the implicit meaning which states the love, the security feeling and also many more positive feelings that we express and share as human beings. Thislittle group of people gathered just because of those feelings; to protect them and make sure no one tries to harm it. These two dayswill be hard for all Delegates but harder for DROI because what they will do is to put some rules as it will be taken into account in a way considering every single human life.

Recent Assad regime against basic hu-man rights such as freedom of expression, freedom of life, freedom of thought and many more, has made a huge impact on international stage. As the slaughter and displacement of Assad regime increases,

the only way maintaining peace seems to sustain territorial integrity while consider-ing of the social balance. Many of the documents and reports points us the viola-tion of human rights done by the regime and in addition, requests interference with the places, where the violations done.

At the point of solutions, generally there are some strict and precise steps that must be taken towards the problem. How-ever trying to take the right step may end up falling down. To clarify, lowering the loss of human lives and going for an agreement with the Bashar al-Assad regime is like the edges of different sides. Furthermoreit would be harder to make an agreement between international communities, which is not consisting the recent government since this would be seen as ignoring the government of a country and interfering its internal issues without any permission. This makes us think that the current proce-dures are not actually working with recent regime. So now we should ask this ques-tion to ourselves which I quoted from the overview of beautiful Izaura and handsome Tiago: “Could this be the time to overhaul the currently existing procedures?”

Humanity for RealityDROI – Committee on Human Rightsby Hamdi

14


Euro – currency of the future or of the past? In light of the current debt crisis, as exem-plified by the financial situ-ations of Greece and Spain,

what measures should the European Union take to ensure the stability of the common currency?

Baring in mind the fact that they came here with limited money and as under-stood from the name of the committee, this people will be discussing about money for two days, in addition, limiting their cash which makes the biggest difference whencompared to other committees. Lovely Delegates of the Committee on Economic and Monetary Affairs has already taken theresponsibility; it is apparently understand-able that they believed in saving the world. During the teambuilding they were collect-ing money with a box using ‘Every Euro Counts’ policy. However this people came here to discuss some serious stuff ratherthan just having fun.

Nowadays, world has to face a Euro-pean Union as its member states gets eco-nomically worse one by one everyday. Thispushes the countries to think of changing their currency to their national one and quitting Eurozone. Considering the both sides benefits and needs it puts a big ques-

tion mark of what may happen if the con-sidered countries quit Eurozone. Besides that, observing the cause of this economic crisis it is apparent that basically ‘rich gets richer and poor gets poorer.’ This is mainlycaused by the geographical locations of EU states.

The fork of the ideas appears here,should all the EU countries quit Eurozone to stabilize and in case improve their eco-nomical situation or should they continue on endeavoring to stabilize the currency and increasing the Eurozone members by taking in the countries that are economi-cally well structured. In both ways, the EU has to take some precautions to prevent getting destroyed in a way, which all the EU countries may drown in debts.

The most important point here is to getinto the very detail of this situation without being subjective, considering every coun-try’s sake at the solution and prepare the resolution in a way which would convince anyone who takes a look. To conclude at these two days of committee work many of you may find yourself in a controversy butif you keep up with your committee, saving the world can actually become true.

Money Money MoneyECON – Committee on Economic and Monetary Affairsby Hamdi

15


No laws for drug testing: With regard to medicine testing to human beings, how can the EU guaran-tee that the health and

dignity of the patients are fully accounted for, all while securing the interests of phar-maceutical companies?

Drug testing or specifically clinical tri-als were common since 1700. There havebeen numerous conducts on patients, but the first and most famous was James Lind’sclinical trial. This trial was conducted in or-der to cure Scurvy (a disease that resulted from the deficiency of vitamin C).He dis-covered that in order to treat scurvy, the patients had to consume citrus fruit.

With the flow of time and the rise of thetechnological era, drug testing has become more and more complex. There are certainrules and protocols that must be followed. Still these rules do not guarantee the health and dignity of the patients.

Even though drug testing on humans is very crucial, it has its downsides. Right now there are no solid laws regarding med-icine testing. There are several institutionsgovernmental and nongovernmental alike that implement guidelines and rules for example like The Clinical Trial Protocol,National Institutes of Health, Contract Re-search Organization, Institutional Review

Board, etc.This controversy reached its climax in

2001 when the editors of 12 major newspa-pers released a joint article that criticized pharmaceutical companies for not respect-ing the patient’s rights. This article talkedmostly about many cases of clinical trials that have exerted patients.

So what should the delegates do dur-ing committee work is basically to find oruse the information they have regarding the protocols and institution. It would be great if they could provide specific proto-cols and cases of clinical trials. They have toget the ethical point of view from these in-stitutions but they also have to evaluate the interest of the pharmaceutical companies. This means that they have to identify theproblems and try to give them diplomatic solution. With diplomatic solutions I mean they have to find the best approach thatguarantee the moral rights of the patients but also that favor the goals of the phar-maceutical companies. Favoring the objec-tives of the pharmaceutical companies will increase the chances of curing diseases, but it will also increase their economic power. In order to conduct a clinical trial they have to find sponsors. Sponsors who will supplythem with money and materials but also they will find the patients.

ENVI – Committee on Environment, Public Health and Food Safetyby Willred

16


ITRE – Committee on Industry, Research and Energyby Willred

Energy makes the world go ‘round: At a time when the energy needs of the EU con-tinue to rise and its resources start lacking, how can we in-

crease the use of alternative energies and promote further research in the field?

Everyone nowadays knows that energy is lacking more and more day by day. Thepast century people and major corpora-tions use nonrenewable resources like coal, petroleum etc. There are two problems re-sulting from the usage of fossil fuels. First there’s the problem that there can be found limited amounts of coal and petroleum around the world. The other problem isthe amount of greenhouse gases are emit-ted when burning these resources. Green-house gases are gases that damage the ozone layer. In order to prevent this from happening, in 1997 the Kyoto protocol was adopted. Only in February 2005 the proto-col came into force. As of September 2011, 191 states have signed and ratified the pro-tocol excluding the US. This protocol hadcertain mechanisms that helped lower the emission of greenhouse gases. This one ofthe things delegates should bear in mind. That in order to lower the emission of gaseswe have to lower the usage of fossil fuels.

On the other hand delegates should consider alternative energy. Lately a lot of

alternative ways to generate energy exist for example like solar energy, wind energy, tidal energy, geothermal energy, nuclear, etc.

Using these methods to generate en-ergy has proven to be very efficient. On theother side of the coin, implementing facili-ties to provide with alternative energy costs a lot and right now the EU is in a crisis. So-lar energy is hard to generate because we still don’t have the necessary technology to produce massive amounts energy. Since alternative energy has downsides too, del-egates have to find the best approach thatis between lowering the burning of fossil fuels but also implementing facilities about alternative energies.

The EU has already long term plans for2020 and 2050. This is really positive butwhat about the period between?

This is one of the most important tasksthat delegates have to research and discuss among themselves. They have to find so-lutions and plans that cover this 30 years period. At first they have to identify theirproblems specifically: the lacking of fossilfuels, the greenhouse gases, the cost of al-ternative energy and the crisis we are fac-ing.

17


I have been happy single since I was six years old, that was when I had my last girlfriend –I guess that it was also somewhere around that time that I lost my looks-. Her

name was Ayla and we started dating in Kindergarten. I liked Egypt at that age, she had been on a cruise to Egypt that summer vacation, it looked like God himself brought us together. Our relationship had the usual ups and downs. I still remember how mad she was when I didn’t bring a gift to schoolfor her on Valentines Day, something that I had never heard of before that day. Then,one year later, I broke up with her.

When I look back at it, I think I did it because I realised that I didn’t need some-one to be happy. I can create happiness by myself and wow, how did I succeed! Look at me now: I’m 18, still live with my mom and I need to survive from my allowance. Who wouldn’t want to be me?!

Ok, enough crap about me, I just can’t help that fact that I’m always convinced that people show an interest in me. Being single isn’t one of the worst things in the world and I’m sure I’m not alone on this. When I asked some of you what you thought about it you all agreed: there’s no one that you need to inform about what you’re doing all the time (except for your mom of course),

no one to buy presents for and no one you have to ignore your friends for. It looks to me that being single is actually better than having a relationship –wow, am I an anti-cupid-. This is not a weird way of thinking,especially not –this is where I’m going to use difficult words to look more intelligent-in our post-modern society. Since 1968, the year of the great French philosopher Sartre and of the spring of Prague, people have started to think more individually and de-manded more autonomy. It’s not surpris-ing that since then the number of births has been declining (because of that and condoms of course).

This declining birth number has asresult that our population is ageing which forms a big problem for our social security. There’s only one effective solution for thisproblem and it is to make a lot of baby’s! Luckily for us they founded EYP in 1987 and since then this organisation has been hooking up people from all over Europe. There exist EYP couples that are happilymarried and there even are some rumours about EYP baby’s. I can tell you that we from the media team are already watching out for who of you will form the session couple. If only Ayla was in EYP, we could make such beautiful EYP baby’s.

Singles Pageby Matteo

18


EYP can look very strange to outsiders: some kids play-ing silly games, embarrassing themselves in public... It’s isn’t that surprising that first-time

delegates feel a bit uncomfortable when they are suddenly confronted with things like team building, eurovillage, spending days without sleeping... Luckily there are always experienced EYP’ers to give you some advice. Young padawans, let me be your master, your very own Obi-Wan Ke-nobi, for the rest of this article and I’ll teach you how to survive this week. Only by read-ing this article carefully you will get home safely (and yes, I did just rhyme there).

1. Get people’s names straight away or you might get in a lot of awkward situation later in the session.

2. Try to meet as many new people as possible, there’s a big chance that you’ll see some of them again at other sessions and it’s always awkward when you’re like “Oh, you were also at that session, didn’t really notice you”

3. Go to one of our local stores and buy a supply of energy drinks. You don’t only want to stay awake to make a good impression and to be actively involved, you should also remember that there are journalists taking pictures everywhere. For us, the best pictures are often of people drooling.

4. Related to the previous tip, always

look at your best. You don’t want us to make a “Hot or Not” column in the newspapers.

5. Watch out with starting romances with people from other committee’s. Romeo and Juliet is a great movie and the book ver-sion isn’t that bad either, but we all know how these two lovebirds ended up.

6. Stay hydrated and eat enough, eating is not only cool and fun to do, it helps you to stay awake.

7. There’s an old saying: “Beer beforewine makes you feel fine, wine before beermakes you feel queer” Watch out with what you drink to avoid embarrassing situations.

8. Sleep as much as possible, preferable at night. Other good moments for a power nap are: coffee breaks, bus rides...

9.Always watch out with what you say in GA: don’t repeat things that have already been said before, attack speeches should only been given when they state a general disagreement with the resolution, never talk about money and the golden rule of General Assembly: never ask ‘How are you going to do this” Some advice our own president Tia-go once gave me is to always suggest another option when you disapprove of something.

10. Respect the officials; we are awe-some!

So young padawans, go use and spread this knowledge, as it should be handed over from generation to generation. One day, you yourself to will be the master...

Tips ‘n Tricksby Matteo

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Documents

The TPirana Gang-Issue 1