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Hello, my name is Alberto Cottica.

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I work at the Council of Europe

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on a project called EdgeRyders,

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it is about the transition of young people

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to an independent, active life.

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If you look at the data,

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young europeans seem pretty much like a lost generation.

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Unemployment is very high,

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and what’s worse, about one person in five

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is not in employment, education or training.

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This does not happen only in your early twenties.

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It actually gets worse as you go towards your mid-thirties.

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What we’re looking at here is a general loss of autonomy

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of the adult population.

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The young just happen to be in the line of fire.

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But that’s not the whole story.

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Europe, and indeed the world,

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are full of extremely entrepreneurial, brilliant, generous,

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talented, young people.

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They find new paths to activism,

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for example leveraging the diversity of backgrounds

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of second and third generation europeans

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to make society more open.

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They start companies to build large-scale urban games

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that are used to reappropriate public spaces

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and use them in new ways.

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They move to North Sea islands

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to explore the way small communities

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can switch to renewable energy sources,

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finding a new sense of purpose as they do so.

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And they make learning easier to access

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by launching free, peer-to-peer, online schools.

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These people don’t work together.

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In fact, they’ve never even met.

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But their activities seem to be connected

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in a coherent picture.

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And this picture is that of

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the world we’ll all be living in tomorrow.

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And by the way, though you certainly can view them as successful

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they are by a measure of success

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that is not the same as that normally accepted

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by the society at large.

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Many struggle to make a living

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or have done so as they started their journeys.

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Just like you and me.

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How to make a living with integrity,

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how to live the kind of life that we want,

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how to have a say in our communities.

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So many people in Europe and elsewhere,

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young and not so young,

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are thinking very hard about these problems,

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and that makes them - us - the experts.

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And when you pull together a lot of experts

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what you have is a think tank.

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EdgeRyders wants to be

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the largest think tank in the world

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on the youth’s transition

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to an independent active life.

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How does this work?

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Well, it starts by exploring the transition space.

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And that means sharing what we are doing

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as we build our lives,

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learning from each other,

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and figuring out together what to do next.

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There is a gaming element.

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Society’s typically not generous with rewards

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for young people’s efforts,

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but we think it’s important to honour them.

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So we do it with points and stuff like that.

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The second step is to aggregate

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the individual journeys into common solutions,

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generate a policy vision,

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and bring it to the attention

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[br]of the European and national authorities.

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The space where we do all this

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is an interactive online platform

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called EdgeRyders,

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developed here at the Council of Europe,

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based on free software.

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EdgeRyders is designed to be scalable.

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So whether you’re a regional government,

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a local authority,

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a private or third-sector organisation,

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if you care about this problem,

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please come see us

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and we’ll discuss possible partnerships.

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Meanwhile, good luck with your journey.