Whose resilience? Intergenerational fairness, gender and minoritised language communities

Draft agenda

Webstream JDE62

14:00 – 14:10 | Opening and interactive introduction 

14:10 – 15:10 | Panel discussion: Intergenerational fairness, gender and minoritised language communities 

Moderator

• Furkan Sorkuncuk, Project Coordinator at Volonteurope

Panellists:

• Nicoletta Merlo, President EESC Youth Group (Gr.II)
• Davyth Hicks, Secretary General at European Language Equality Network (ELEN)
• Michaela Karamperi, Co-President of Generation Climate Europe
• Béla Kuslits, Coordinator of the Future Generations Initiative
• Nicolas Levrat, UN Special Rapporteur on Minority Issues
• Anita Zorzi, 4Voices Youth Ambassador

15:10 – 15:20 | Q&A with participants 

15:20 – 15:30 | Closing reflections

This workshop will ask simple but urgent questions: whose resilience is Europe relying on, for whom are we building resilience and at what cost? Across overlapping crises, it is too often those with the least power that must demonstrate resilience, such as women, LGBTQI+ groups, European minoritised and endangered language communities and younger and future generations. The session will be rooted in the EU’s foundational values under Article 2 TEU and will bring together Volonteurope, Generation Climate Europe (GCE) and the European Language Equality Network (ELEN). It will reframe resilience as a question of responsibility and voice that is shaped by lived experience and collective memory and by the way in which gendered and colonial legacies influence who is expected to cope, who is heard and who is protected. 

The workshop will characterise resilience as a democratic issue that spans generations, genders and languages and as continuity: of rights, relationships, languages, belonging and the ability to live, organise and pass on culture and knowledge across generations. It will explore how political shifts, climate change and inaction, dominant colonial narratives, silencing and displacement can hollow out people’s futures. The session will foreground grassroots perspectives and encourage participants to think of resilience not as endurance, but as a collective democratic commitment, and will also call on the institutions to protect current and future generations and safeguard Europe’s minoritised and endangered languages.