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Carrying out a route to youth has the intent to encourage and give value to the way in which youth should take part in a society under deep change, to become an active part of such change, and to overcome the obstacles and the unrest they feel over their responsibility in social renewal.

The great concern of Portuguese youth, nowadays, is focused upon the search for the necessary props and opportunities to manage their own lives and acquire the means to take independent decisions.

The lengthening of the educational period required to gain competences, the difficulties of access to the labour market and the lack of employment stability, all of these greater when qualifications are lower, added to the difficulties in access to accommodation, all contribute towards the delay in the autonomy of youth.

However, active and independent civic participation of young adults is a determining factor of an economically and socially developed society.

A strong incentive message is required for those young people that searched and found their path towards emancipation and towards a growing civic participation, publicizing not just their successes but also the risks and the obstacles they had to overcome, thus becoming useful examples for others and a stimulus for improving the means to take part in the decisions which respect them.

This Route to Youth includes visits to companies of young farmers, initiatives of young entrepreneurs such as the business incubator in ANJE (National Association of Young Entrepreneurs) Headquarters and Portugal Fashion, to a cultural organization led by young people (CAR) and to the Porto Academic Federation, with the following objectives:

1. To value youth membership drive in the entrepreneurial medium as a means to promote autonomy, to enhance capabilities and skills, to aggregate supports and make heard their concerns and needs, contributing towards the solutions in a framework of cooperation amongst the diverse sectors in the world of youth.
2. To show the capability for innovation and initiative of young entrepreneurs and publicize their potentialities in sectors such as agriculture, which is critically dependent from the rejuvenation of its entrepreneurial fabric and of its capability to very quickly reverse its progressive ageing cycle. The issue is not just their capacity for change, but also to simply ensure their own future lives as farmers, without which no agriculture will exist. It is within this double perspective that an analysis must be made of the fact that more than half of European agricultural operations are managed by farmers which are more than 55, of which half are more than 65 years old.
3. To recognize the civic and social activities of youth associations and voluntary workers or the capacity for leadership of young people, emphasizing their sense of social responsibility, their initiative and generosity, in such diverse fields as inter-generational support, cultural and sports activities or support for the access of young people to the labour market. Voluntary work and juvenile membership drive must be cherished and encouraged as essential to the dynamism of civil society and to the development of a healthy culture of solidarity, which implies that the skills thus developed are given due value in the labour market.
4. To provide the opportunity for young people to show their capacity to rally round ambitious objectives, their courage to face obstacles, and the means used to materialize their autonomy or to become an active part in the change of the building of a fairer and more fraternal society.

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