Arka Foundation is a non-governmental organization that aims to empower young people to be active citizens and partake in creating prosperous, safe and inclusive communities through specific youth-initiated, youth-led and youth-centered activities oriented towards promoting activism, volunteering and active participation, EU Youth Dialogue/structured dialogue, social inclusion, gender equality, and access to rights. We aim to strengthen young people’s capacities through workshops, training courses, advocacy and raising awareness giving them the skills, tools and knowledge to address some of the most burning issues in their local communities. We advocate for equal participation of everyone regardless of their gender, sex, sexual orientation, disability, ethnicity, nationality, and other, in shaping democratic societies from the locale. In our projects we work with young leaders who become able to analyze, identify and monitor local youth challenges, raise awareness of important issues, mobilize their peers and engage in a meaningful dialogue with local stakeholders. In doing so, we pay special attention to mainstreaming gender issues and participation of young girls and women. In order to promote gender equality, we especially encourage young girls and women to actively partake in our activities, learn how to stand up for themselves and hold local stakeholders accountable, knowing that women have limited access to decision-making circles and political dialogue. We aim to promote women empowerment and leadership as one of the key foundations of a just, equal and democratic society.
Our activities focus on decentralization of youth services and support for young people because we believe the impact of youth work is the greatest on the local level. We believe that through such engagement, young people will directly take part in creating democratic societies by reinforcing solidarity, unitedness and equality among their peers.
Since Arka’s establishment in 2016, we have worked with local and national policy and decision-makers, as well as different age groups of young people (high school youth, students, fresh graduates), so we confidently tailor our activities to specific needs of various target groups.
Some of the most relevant projects we have implemented is ‘YouthUp Democracy’, the very first national Erasmsus+ KA347 project in Serbia (2019-2021), ‘Youth Safety Culture – Prevention and Response in Emergency Situations’ (2018), and two Erasmus KA1 projects for mobility of youth workers, whereas currently we are coordinating an EU and SIDA co-funded project ‘Young Women Take the Lead’ (2022-2023) and partaking as a partner in another Erasmus+ KA220 project ‘Part of EU 2030’ (2022-2023).
