For two days, education and work with children and youth were discussed in Bucharest by over 100 practitioners in the field. Representatives of NGOs from Romania and other European countries, blogers, academics and representatives of Council of Europe met between 14 and 15 of October, at Bucharest, at the conference Civil Society: Trends in working with children and youth. The event was organised through NGO Fund programme in Romania, and financed by the EEA and Norway Grants 2009 - 2014.

"We need an integrated policies in education" declare Remus Pricopie, Minister of National Eduation, in the opening plenary session of the conference. With regards to the school infrastructure, the minister says: "We are working to prioritize investments and identify the amounts necessarry in order to have schools were there are children. Next year we will have more places at pegadogical high schools, to cover the existing needs from kindergartens and nurseries."

Her Excellency, Mrs. Tove Bruvik Westberg, Norwegian ambassador at Bucharest, belives that "education is one of the key areas for Romanian society development". "Protecting human rights and promoting democracy include combating discriminatory speech. The right to free expresion does not imply the right to discriminate through the messages sent", said the ambassador.

A particular attention was paid to innovative methods to combat hatefull speech. We presented some of the findings of "Hate speech in Romanian and European context" realised by a group of researchers from Babes Bolyai University from Cluj - Napoca. The research shows that the most vulnerable group, in terms of exposure to hate speech, is represented by LGTB. European barometers reinforce this conclusion. According to them, Romania has the most negative attitudes towards homesexuality in EU. Roma are the second most discriminated group after sexual minorities. In their case, hate speech is very common in politicians public discourse (as recorded in Amnestz International report from 2011). During the workshop the debates on hate speech issues continued, especially on  combating hate speech in schools and other related fields.

Among other topics of the conference were active participation of young people, educating for human rights, democracy and intercultural education. Online safety for children and youth was a special topic of debate. Were introduced the results of EU Kids Online and Net Children Go Mobile, realised at European level, and analised the proper ways to prevent and combat emerging threats on the Internet during dedicated workshops. 

The second day of the conference was dedicated to experimentation of nonformal education methods by wich organisations can protect human rights and combat hate speech in Romania.