On 12 August, at THE YOUTH by FNT in Bucharest, the young people who had spent the previous days learning and growing as participants stepped to the other side of the room, and became the ones leading the way. To mark International Youth Day, they facilitated their own workshops for the local community, turning everything they had learned into hands-on experiences for their peers.
These weren’t improvised sessions. They were the culmination of nine days of the Youth Forward Lab youth exchange, which brought together 41 young people from seven countries. Throughout the week, participants had explored civic engagement, communication and media, social skills, and participatory art, always through learning by doing rather than lectures. And every step of that journey had a clear destination in mind: this day, when they would design and deliver their own workshops for others.
After a morning dedicated to final rehearsals, the doors opened at 17:00. Working in pairs, the participants led a series of short, 30-minute interactive workshops, repeated across successive rounds and spread over four parallel spaces. The format was deliberately open: visitors could move freely between rooms, following their curiosity rather than a fixed path.
The range of workshops reflected everything the young people had picked up during the week. In Camera Presence & Personal Image, participants learned how to shoot reels and work a camera with confidence. If I Could Hear One Thing turned language into play, as visitors discovered new words in different languages together. In the Media Room, 3D Printing let people watch an idea take shape layer by layer, while the Solutions Scavenger Hunt put critical thinking to the test through tricky real-life scenarios.
Elsewhere, the Live Action Art Gallery invited visitors to become the statues themselves, and Survival Game: Lost at Sea challenged small teams to work together to make it through. Out in The Yard, the Wish Dandelion Puff workshop let people craft their own decoration and make a wish along the way, while Unsent Letters ran as a continuous installation throughout the whole event, a letter hung in a tree, no name attached, just each visitor and the things still left unsaid.
For the participants, facilitating these workshops was far more than a final task. It was the moment they stopped being beneficiaries of a programme and became creators of experiences for others. Standing in front of a room, guiding an activity, holding the attention and energy of a group, these are skills that stay with you, and skills the young people practised for real, not in a simulation.
And for the community that took part, the day offered something equally valuable: a chance to learn, play, and connect, guided by peers who were genuinely excited to share what they knew. It was a living example of what youth empowerment really looks like, young people inspiring other young people, in a space where everyone felt welcome, heard, and part of something bigger.
International Youth Day is a moment to recognise the energy, creativity, and potential of young people. On 12 August, the participants of Youth Forward Lab did exactly that, not by being celebrated, but by showing, through their own workshops, just how much they have to give.
The workshops were facilitated by the participants of the Youth Forward Lab youth exchange, implemented by the National Foundation for Youth (Romania) together with partner organisations from the Czech Republic, Poland, Lithuania, Spain, Greece and Türkiye. Project co-funded by the European Union through the Erasmus+ programme.