“APYN should outlast me in time”

Interview with João Salviano Carmo, initiator and coordinator of APYN

By Katharina Moser

How did it occur to you to build upAPYN?
JSC: APYN was a natural follow-up to the work I had done in the European Youth Forum as a Bureau Member and a direct reply to the youth organisations request that a common space for development and sharing of best practices in the field of alcohol policy should be created. Even though I have been in the driver’s seat in this effort APYN represents a wider desire of the youth movement to be better involved and aware of alcohol policy and how young people can be actors in addressing alcohol related harm.

How would you describe the development from the first time you had the idea until the constitutive meeting?
JSC: When APYN first came to my mind I knew that in order for this project to become a reality the main stakeholders on alcohol and youth had to be involved from the beginning and their support to APYN had to be unequivocal from day one. In that sense I approached Eurocare and the European Youth Forum and presented them an idea where youth organisations themselves would be the leading force of a project that aims primarily at empowering young people to be active in alcohol policy. Once these two organisations took the decision of supporting the project we moved to the Intergovernmental sphere and sought the support of DG SANCO of the European Commission, the World Health Organization, and others as such in order to guarantee that not only civil society would be backing APYN, but also the governments would support the kind of youth involvement APYN aims at developing. With these two levels of support and engagement in APYN secured we moved then to encourage the youth organisations to join and lead APYN, and that commitment was reinstated in the Constitutive Meeting last March hence establishing the Alcohol Policy Youth Network.

What do you want to reach via APYN? What is your dream?
JSC: Even though I have been, as I said before, in the driving seat of APYN until now, I don't see APYN as a personal project as such, but more as a common project of many, many young people from across Europe, starting with the team that has been working with me that gathers eight young people coming from seven countries across Europe, the members of APYN (27 at the time being), and of course all the NGOs and Institutions that seek to involve young people in this field and promote their genuine participation in the development, implementation and evaluation of programmes and policies that affect our daily lives directly or indirectly. However I would be lying if I said that there is no personal attachment from my side to APYN whatsoever. Being that this is a project that I helped create from the first idea to what it is today I do have strong emotional ties to it and I wish APYN all the success in the world. I am willing to work as hard as I can to involve as many youth organisations and young people in this empowering process in order to contribute to the development of a better world for all.

My dream for APYN is that it outlasts me in time and becomes a successful platform for youth participation and involvement not only in Europe but across the Globe as well and that through our work we can touch the lives of many and help them in improving their own lives by creating the proper atmosphere for their personal and community developments.

If you could tell the European Youth one thing, what would it be?
JSC: I am nobody to tell the European Youth anything but if I'm asked advice by a young person I would tell him/her to participate, to get involved, to take the future into his/her own hands and not be a bystander while others decided what you think, like or wish.

It works better when you are the one who actually say these things, don't you think?