The Regional Assistant Secretary of the Presidency for Parliamentary Affairs made today "an urgent call to the participation" of Azorean young people in the public life of the community.
"It is this participation that enriches the life of our Region and it is through this participation that you can make your contribution and make a difference. We recognise youth not as a recipient of change, but as an agent of change," said Isabel Rodrigues.
The Regional Secretary spoke at the opening session of the international conference "Young people as actors of social change," which takes place at the University of the Azores until Friday. The event is the result of a partnership between the Regional Government and the Azores Youth Observatory.
In her speech, Isabel Rodrigues assured that the Government "is attentive to the phenomena concerning Azorean youth" and has been "responsible for creating conditions and providing the tools to support the consolidation" of the development process of young people and them build their autonomy.
In this regard, the government official stressed that the work of the Regional Government is at a sectoral level, pointing out that education policies, housing access policies and employment programmes "have played an important role in this particularly difficult year, especially in the access to traineeships and support to the integration of young people in companies.
According to Isabel Rodrigues, this work is focused on the perspective of promoting the training of young people, which is embodied in "the support to youth association, intensive programmes to support youth mobility"; the latter is "a major challenge" in an outermost region as the archipelago of the Azores.
The Regional Secretary considered that the events such as this international conference and the work carried out by the Azores Youth Observatory "are a very important resource" for the Regional Government According to her, "public policies have to be based on the knowledge of reality and the Observatory has done this work in partnership with the Azorean Government and we intend to continue it."