Cooperation and Development Network Eastern Europe (CDN)
The Cooperation and Development Network Eastern Europe (Acronym: CDN) is a capacity-building network of political green youth organisations from Central, Eastern and South Eastern Europe. CDN’s political focus is on Eastern Europe where the organisation works with local partners. CDN also collaborates with organisations and activists from the rest of Europe who want to support a Green Eastern Europe. CDN work is committed to upholding and fostering the values of the Green movement: gender equality, active youth participation in democracy, environmental protection. History. CDN was founded in December 2002 with the  goal of developing and supporting green youth organisations in Eastern and South Eastern Europe through cooperation and transfer of knowledge. With an active collaboration and support of FYEG and Green Forum Sweden, CDN is now a network of Young Greens in Eastern Europe which supports the Young Green organisations in the region. CDN is focused on but not limited to study sessions, seminars, summer camps and other regular co-learning activities among constant communication and collaboration between its member and partner organisations. Also differences in methodology of educational work and cultural differences made it clear, that the green ideology in  practice has to be differently implemented in Eastern Europe then in the West. The first activity done by CDN was the Summer Camp 2003 "Peace and Reconciliation on the Balkan" in Jahorina, Bosnia and Herzegovina, with 80 young participants from all over Europe. Structure and organisation. CDN was built through the structure of the Federation of Young European Greens (FYEG). Both organisations are forming a close connection, mainly because of common educational and political work. Also a lot of CDN member organisations are member of FYEG. CDN is a network build of Member and Partner organisations. Partner organisations are those  organisations with seat in a country of the European Union. This distinction aims on focusing the work on organisations from non-EU countries and on showing a signal towards these organisations. It was decided on the Network Meeting 2005 in Bitola, Macedonia. In difference to Member organisations Partner organisations do not have voting right on the General Assemblies, but they can participate in discussions. The highest decision making body of CDN is the General Assembly. All Partner and Member organisations can send up to two delegates. Each Member organisation has two votes. The CDN General Assembly decides upon the budget  of the last and the coming year, the political and work report of the last year, the activity plan for the coming year and it elects and dismiss the CDN Executive Committee. The CDN Executive Committee meets at least several times a year. CDN also has such working groups as RUMB (Russia, Ukraine, Moldova and Belarus) Working Group, Digital [X], Gender Working Group, and Alternative Urbanization. Founders. The initiative for establishing CDN as a green network in Eastern Europe came from Macedonian Young Greens (DEM - Youth) and Serbian Young Greens supported by the Federation of Young European Greens in December  2002. Since its foundation CDN is sustainably supported by the Green Forum Sweden. Another main source of support is the Council of Europe Youth foundation. Also from the very beginning CDN took part in the Youth program of the European Commission, mainly through Exchanges. Further more activities were realized through the support of the Bundesverwaltungsamt, Referat Internationaler Jugendaustausch im Bereich des Bundesministeriums für Familie, Senioren, Frauen und Jugend sowie des Auswärtigen Amtes (German Federal office for international youth exchange within the range of the Federal Ministry for family, seniors, women and youth as well as the Foreign Office) as  well as Member of the European Parliament and the Federation of Young European Greens. Currently, the main founders and partners of CDN are Federation of Young European Greens (FYEG), Green Forum Sweden, Green European Foundation, European Youth Foundation, Council of Europe and Bureau de Helling. Educational and political work. The main instrument of the educational work of CDN is the exchange of young people from all over Europe. These exchanges are either seminars (like the Summer Camp) under the support of the Council of Europe Youth Foundation, Youth Exchanges under Youth in action program of the European Commission, Study Sessions  in the Budapest Study Center of the Council of Europe and Pilot Projects. Further more the CDN homepage, e-lists and audiovisual materials are used for the exchange of knowledge and competence within the CDN Partner and Member organisations. Member and partner organisations. , the Cooperation and Development Network Eastern Europe has the following Member Organizations: Following organisations are Partner Organizations of the Cooperation and Development Network Eastern Europe: