Dear readers,

Back in late 2021, the EU decided to make 2022 the year of youth. Its aim was to shine the spotlight on the situation of young people, especially against the backdrop of the COVID-19 crisis, which was quite hard on them, negatively affecting their situation on the labour market as well as their education.

The EU wanted to prompt decision-makers to promote opportunities for young people and encourage them to become active citizens and actors of change, and called for the maximum engagement with those hardest to reach: young people with disabilities, minority groups and those living in disadvantaged areas.

Little did we know that less than two months into the year that the EU had dedicated to youth, in a cruel twist of fate, young people at its eastern borders would be fleeing to shelters to hide from bombs and missiles, would be forced to leave their country to avoid getting killed or would be losing their brothers, fathers or their own lives in the bloody trenches of Ukrainian battlefields, following Russia's cruel attack on Ukraine and its civilian population.
In this year of such turbulent events, the EESC decided to make its 2022 Civil Society Prize a dual award, dedicated to two themes – youth and Ukraine.

In the first category entitled "Empowering young people", we looked for projects that creatively encouraged and helped new generations find their voice and stand firmly on their feet in a world becoming increasingly polarised and hostile, battling inflation, climate change and the energy crisis, to name just a few of the challenges.

The prize in the "European civil society for Ukraine" category was intended to pay tribute to civil society, which quickly mobilised to help Ukrainian civilians as soon as the war started, and to honour the thousands of civil society initiatives that mushroomed across Europe in response to the plight of Ukrainians in the face of the Russian aggression.

We received over a hundred applications and it was not an easy task to choose the best ones, as all our candidates deserved the award for their dedication and solidarity. In the end, the prize was shared between six organisations, three in each category, from five EU countries: Italy, Poland, Portugal, Romania, and Spain with two winning projects.  

On 15 December, we celebrated their fantastic achievements at the award ceremony in Brussels.

All three winning projects in the youth category help young people who don't heave it easy, as they are from disadvantaged segments of society: the Roma minority, young people who have spent part of or their entire childhood in a care system and now have to face the world alone, or are socially excluded for various reasons.

The three projects on Ukraine helped refugees in different ways, assisting them at borders when they first arrived and collecting aid, taking care of children with cancer, or enabling Ukrainians to smoothly integrate into their new communities.

Let me finish the introduction to this special edition of the EESC Info on the Civil Society Prize by repeating the words of Martyna Kowacka, representative of our Polish winner who, in a symbolic gesture, brought the Bethlehem Light of Peace to the award ceremony and pointed to the importance of responding to evil and building such values as tolerance, friendship and readiness to help.

She said she hoped that everyone would make their own contribution so that, one day, we would see the light of peace replace the fire of war.
We believe that, thanks to the selfless and countless efforts of people on the ground who every day contribute to making the world a better place, the fire of war will be soon put out and replaced by the light of peace. And with our prize, we want to pay homage not only to our winners and candidates but also to all other individuals and organisations that keep bringing light to their communities.

Cillian Lohan, Vice-President for Communication