Fostering a Culture of Participation: Mainstreaming Local Youth Councils in Europe

Background The Treaty of the EU declares that “every citizen shall have the right to participate in the democratic life of the Union”. Although the participation of all citizens has been claimed as a fundamental right, in reality, there are big disparities regarding youth participation in decision-making processes, and structures or bodies meant to represent them often diverge from their role. The same EU Youth Goal 9 about Space and Participation for All underlines the importance to “strengthen young people’s democratic participation and autonomy and provide dedicated youth spaces in all areas of society” as needs to be addressed. Participation is also about sharing and redistributing power in the structures where youngsters are present and where their voice is often not adequately considered. Local Youth Councils can be effective tools for this goal since they often are the first contact with more formal democratic mechanisms. However, they can be improved to encourage young generations to participate and make them believe in the democratic process. This project allowed to understand different approaches to these mechanisms, by transferring and exchanging knowledge to their members and training them to improve their practices Objectives This project aimed to raise awareness and foster youth participation in the decision-making process at the local and regional levels, especially by improving local youth council practices. The specific objectives were: - Create a map of the Local Youth Councils' current procedures and organizational setups in the partner countries to identify valuable learnings that may be implemented to enhance the current setups; - Improve skills of those people who are part of Local Youth Councils; - Raise awareness of the Local Young Council's educational and civic goals in educating youth in democracy; - Promote the Local Youth Councils' effectiveness, impact, scope, and evaluation procedures for youth engagement in the decision-making process; - Promote and support the development of Local Youth Councils in Europe as essential tools for promoting youth engagement. Implementation The project had three main activities: - The first Transnational Project Meeting was hosted in Collegno, Italy, on the 18th-19th of October 2021, during which partners got to know each other work, shared experiences and opinions about related topics, and planned the following steps of the project. - A Training course on “Quality assurance in Local Youth Councils” that took place from 2nd to 8th May 2022 in Portimão, Portugal, through which participants improved their expertise on youth participation strategy, shared different approaches to local youth councils in their realities and increased awareness of potential challenges and opportunities. - A second Transnational Project Meeting was set up from 18th – 19th October 2022 in Namur, Belgium, focused on the evaluation of the project implementation, the partnership cooperation, and its results such as the publication “Local Youth Councils – mapping practices” Achievements During and after the implementation of the project, the partners' consortium was able to achieve Tangible outcomes: - A map of existing Local Youth Councils approaches in partner countries, that involved several LYC from the partner countries (young people, youth workers and municipality officers) - Increase the abilities and competencies of youth workers and local youth council members to implement Local Youth Councils as a tool for youth participation. - A set of recommendations for Local Youth Councils to be inclusive, participatory, and sustainable, based on the study of several good models of real-world examples of current Local Youth Councils; - Report on project activities (https://u.pcloud.link/publink/show?code=XZzJsbVZnpevOT6SFdpzOrL0UVigTfDhLLzV) Intangible Outcomes: - More meaningful participation, engagement, and inclusion in local youth councils and similar youth structures for the youth participants; - Increase the engagement of the partners and motivation to continue working on this topic; - Development of competencies in project management and in the Erasmus + program, - Mainstreaming the importance of youth participation in decision-making at the local level.