Nemzeti Ifjúsági Tanács Szövetség

description of organisation

The Nemzeti Ifjúsági Tanács -National Youth Council of Hungary- (NIT) is an umbrella organization for youth NGOs and a forum for young people to foster youth dialogue. It was established in 2012 to popularize the understanding of youth-related issues and establish a dialogue between youth and decision-makers to achieve Youth Policy Goals in the country. The organization has delegate members on a regional basis represented in the General Assemblies. The main members compose the Delegates' Assembly, NIT's main decision-making body. The Assembly meets at least twice a year and decides on the organization's most critical issues, such as management, personnel issues, the action plan, and the recruitment of new members. The Board of the organization consists of the president and two vice-presidents which are elected every two years. The organization includes a supervising board that supervises the observance of the laws and internal regulations.

The organization has three main aims:
1. To increase quality, innovation and recognition of youth work,
2. To raise young people's awareness of public issues,
3. To promote Hungary's youth policy.

The organization works closely with the international youth community and Hungarian youth organizations across the border to realize these aims. NIT has more than 100 member organizations at the national and grass-root levels.
In general, the target group of the organization's activities is the youth population between 15-30, as defined by the National Youth Strategy. However, the organization members are young people (youth workers and volunteers) from 18-30. More specifically, the NIT involves:
- youth workers
- youth activists on youth policy
- volunteers
- students

Key achievements and activities of the organization in recent years:
- Since 2015, NIT has successfully run the EU Youth Dialogue project, which aims to encourage and support dialogue between young people and decision-makers.
- Since 2019, it has been running a Mentoring Programme, which aims to increase young people's social and civic engagement. The organization has worked with nearly 100 young people in the last two years.
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- A recent successful Erasmus+ project, "Lépj fel!" (2018-3-HU01-KA347-059948 - "Strengthen the informal grouping of Youth at County level") brought together young people and decision-makers in all regions of Hungary to develop a complex set of recommendations to improve the situation of young people - to solve their problems (with nearly 500 participants in total).
This year, NIT has just started the second round of this project (2020-3-HU01-KA347-093844 - "Lépj fel! 2.0"). The main objective is to address further the problems identified earlier in working groups and formulate a complex set of recommendations for youth policy decision-makers.
- The organization works with municipal student councils from 16 counties in the successful "Építsd fel!" project.

In addition, NIT implements large-scale events such as the NIT Open University (with over 100 young people), the Community Trainings (two sessions a year in spring and autumn: the aim is to support youth - civil sector recruitment processes for 100 people), and it also works on sustainability and innovation in one-to-one projects.

The National Youth Council has been running an internship programme since 2020, which allows 6 young people per year to volunteer for six months (2x3 people). The programme aims to deepen their knowledge through practical activities and provide experience within the youth NGO sector.