Most of the activities for youth lack a strategic approach and do not yield average- or long-term results. 30% of the activities are cultural, while 22% are sports one even if there is a separate budget for sport. The findings were made public in a meeting of the Civil Society Press Club themed “How to engage the young people from rural areas? Realities and possibilities”, Info-Prim Neo reports. “The monitoring of 13 youth resource centers showed that not much is invested in the youth at local level. There is no strategic approach and there are carried out only one- or two-day activities with a low impact, while the beneficiaries are only three-four persons. Sport is undoubtedly one of the important areas of our country, but we should not confuse the youth activities with the sport ones as there are separate budgets for youth and sport,” said Eduard Mihalas, a member of the National Youth Council of Moldova. The monitoring revealed that a large part of the financial resources allocated to the youth resource centers are used to pay money awards, while another part to purchase souvenirs and flowers. Not much money is invested in youth activities. “The local authorities do not know what youth policy means. There is a wrong perception of the young people living in rural communities. They are regarded as a problem, as the fifth cart wheel. When there are local specialists on youth problems, activities for youth are organized in the settlements. If there are no such specialists, the local administration does not make effort to stage such events,” said Eduard Mihalas. The Monitoring and Assessment of the LPA Budgets on Youth Project will be implemented by the National Youth Council during May 2011 – May 2012. It is financially supported by the Ministry of Youth and Sport and the Balkan Trust for Democracy within the German Marshall Fund of the United States.