On 21-28 July, 2019 the German town of Duren hosted the III Youth Russian-German Forum of twinned cities which gathered about 60 representatives from both countries.

Photo: Heike Maus

The III Youth Forum is the project sponsored by the German-Russian Forum and German-Russian Youth Exchanges Fund. 

The Forum was organized  concurrently with   the XV Russian-German Twinned cities Conference  which is biannual and is held in a German or Russian city.

The youth forum involved designing joint youth projects in social area under the framework of twinned cities partnership relations, as well as promoting youth exchange and interaction between young people   of the two countries. This year’s festival motto was “City in motion: Your project is important!”

Perm-Duisburg youth team, including 3 representatives  from  Perm and Duisburg aged under 30, has succeeded through a rough selection  competition, as only 11 joint projects were chosen from a large number of applications. 

As Oleg Mekhonin, the chair of Zarechny territorial community council, explained, the Perm team presented the project named “From big things to minor”. Young people from Perm and Duisburg worked out a long-term project for the current and the following year aimed at promoting interaction in territorial community self-government.  Apart from project presentations and workshops the Forum participants discussed how to use the potential of the young people in developing twinned cities relations;  they also held  a wreath-laying ceremony at the  Aachen  War Memorial  and took part in the  XV  Russian-German Conference of twinned cities  «Roads to mutual understanding: partnerships  as  bridges  in German-Russian dialogue”, which has become the largest and hottest discussion on memory culture and history falsification issues, as well as other topical themes.