The association “Jaunimo debatai” (eng. “Youth debates”) was founded in 2017, after several participants of the “Jugend debattiert in Mittel-, Ost- und Südosteuropa” (eng. Youth debates in Middle, Eastern, and Southeastern Europe) competition in Lithuania banded together. We founded the organisation with the intention of bringing together young debating enthusiasts in Lithuania and helping to organise the debating competition that originally brought us together. Throughout the years, we have grown into an independent non-profit organisation, the aim of which is to promote a debating culture and support a more collaborative society in Lithuania and Europe.
Our activities are wide-ranging – we organise public debates, workshops and information events, whereby we particularly focus on debating activities. We believe that through debate, young people not only learn how to express themselves more convincingly, but also to defend their views in a structured manner. Furthermore, we consider a young person’s ability to listen to a different point of view to be particularly important. With a variety of formats, we invite people to debate in several languages – Lithuanian, German and English.
The association Jaunimo debatai has been growing, changing and renewing itself rapidly. We are now almost 100 members strong, and our annual events are attended by hundreds of young people from different cities in Lithuania and other European countries. For several years, we have been actively involved in international initiatives: Within the framework of Erasmus+ (“Debate Your Issue” 2020–2021, “Debate, not Argue” 2022–2024) and other programmes (“Freiraum” 2017–2018 with the network of Goethe-Institutes in Europe), we organise youth exchanges and invite young people from all over the world to an international dialogue. Since many of our members study or have studied abroad, we also organise information events to introduce opportunities for young people in Lithuania to study abroad (for example, in 2024, we organised the International Youth Fair at the European Humanities University).
Our association has many years of experience in organising debate workshops held either in Lithuanian, German or English. We use globally recognised methods and have a team of teachers with international experience. However, since “Jaunimo debatai” has its roots in the German competition format, we are very proud of the Lithuanian debate structure that the association developed in 2022 (in cooperation with Lithuanian communities abroad) and that in 2023 we organised the first Lithuanian-language debating competition (Jaunimo debatų konkursas), in which students from a variety of Lithuanian cities took part.
We also organise multi-day events, such as our Summer Academy (Vasaros akademija), which has been held for five years now and conveys academic knowledge in an accessible format. Each year, participants explore a predetermined topic and discuss its individual aspects in detail, both among themselves and with the academy guests, who are experts in their respective fields (be they scientists, artists, athletes or politicians). The aim of the event is to create a safe and open space for debate, to develop skills in expressing structured opinions, to learn to deliver criticism in an appropriate manner and to promote a culture of debate and discussion.
With our efforts, we aim to contribute to a debating Lithuania!
The association consists of a president, four members of the council, five members of the advisory board and members of the association.
Arnoldas Pranckevičius is the patron of the association “Jaunimo debatai”.
