Young Policy Makers, a workshop

The Erasmus Student Network was invited to Brussels to take part in a Workshop called ''Young Policy Makers'' organised by the European Commission to brainstorm and discuss which will be the main challenges in 2040-2050 that policy makers can start addressing today. The objective of the workshop was to create a context of reflection and debate where young policy makers can express their vision of the future through out-of-the-box thinking, raising new concerns or proposing new approaches to tackle current and future challenges.

The workshop was organised by the Directorate General Information Society and Media (DG INFSO) in preparation for the future policy decisions that the EC will take for the upcoming years (starting 2014) and took place on April 4th.

One of the main topics of the workshops was health issues in 2050 and how will technology will help facing its challenges.

Three main organisations had been invited to the workshop:

• International Health Forum Gastein

• Erasmus Student Network

• Think Young

Six participants of Erasmus Student Network took part in this meeting. Each of the 24 participants of the workshop had prepared a topic that they saw as core challenge for 2040-2050. After the presentations, participants chose 5 topics that they wanted to deepen during a longer workshop in the afternoon.

The workshops were divided in groups with 5 different topics:

1. Innovative health prevention

2. Hi-tech related to social health (topic suggested by Piotr Palczewski)

3. Creative distraction and dislocation

4. Knowledge sharing mechanisms to support

5. Breakdown of language barriers (topic suggested by Stefan Jahnke)

The participants got the chance to develop further their ideas and to discuss them in small teams.

The results of the workshop were a summary of positions and visions that will be used by the European Commission when shaping a first set of policy options for the Digital future exercise.

The workshop was very beneficial for ESN. It allowed the network to be well-represented in front of the Commission and in front of other networks, to increase its visibility and to influence future policies which are important for student mobility.