Participatory Design of Initiatives on Gender Equality Erasmus Project

Project Title

Participatory Design of Initiatives on Gender Equality

Project Key Action

This project related with these key action: Cooperation for innovation and the exchange of good practices

Project Action Type

This project related with this action type : Strategic Partnerships for youth

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2020

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Social dialogue; Gender equality / equal opportunities; EU Citizenship, EU awareness and Democracy

Project Summary

PADIGE’s goal is to increase democratic legitimacy by promoting the possibilities and the initiatives that the European Union offers to partake in the decision making process. More specifically, PADIGE focuses on the European Citizens’ Initiative (ECI), aiming to facilitate the initial phases of ECI proposals preparation through the development of a platform that allows young people to share ideas and get in contact with peers that share the same ideas. PADIGE also goes further than that, by establishing a shared platform in which proposals can be co-written and implemented. Furthermore, PADIGE will create a Guide for Youth Workers which will contain a blended learning course, combining asynchronous and synchronous learning (through webinars) which will aim at training youths on how to apply participatory design methodology into preparing a European Citizens Initiative on the topic of Gender Equality. Additionally, it will create guidelines, methods and advice on how Youth Workers can successfully transfer this knowledge to their youth pupils.

The project aims to involve young Europeans (aged 18-29) through the innovative methodology for Participatory Design of European Citizens Initiative. Special attention will be given to the involvement of NEETs and young people with limited opportunities (30% representation) as well as to the 50-50 gender balance of participating youths.

The specific objectives of the project are:
– To raise the awareness about the European Citizens Initiative as an instrument of European “direct democracy”;
– To provide high quality trainings and tools for Participatory Design of ECIs by using an innovative approach, such as the creation of a blended learning programme and the development of a wiki platform;
– To raise awareness among young people about the importance of Gender Equality
– To provide civic engagement opportunities to disadvantaged young people
– To have an impact on the EU law creation by presenting a new proposal based on the concept of Participatory Design.

PADIGE has 2 main Intellectual outputs:
IO1 Online platform for Participatory Design of European Citizens Initiative
The platform will be based on a wiki tool and will allow the creation of an ECI proposal by youths, on the topic of gender equality, by using participatory design methodology.
IO2 Guide for Youth Workers
A Guide aimed at Youth professionals that will contain a course which will include synchronous learning with webinars. The course will be divided into modules and will focus on participatory design methodology, ECI and gender equality. A research report on good practices in participatory design and ECI design will also be included. Apart from the course, the Guide will also contain guidelines and methods on how to successfully implement this course with youths.

Other outputs of the project include:
– Youth focus groups to access their opinions about the structure of the platform
– Awareness raising campaigns (social media, participation in youth festivals) targeting youths in order to recruit participants in the IO1 platform

The partnership is composed by 6 partners from 5 different European countries, namely France, Greece, Latvia, Spain and Italy, all active in the fields of youth work, training, equal rights/ gender equality promotion and digital tools development.

PADIGE aims to have significant impact at many levels, which may fall into two main macro-categories reflecting the objectives of the project. The first one is related to the ECI initiative. As the data showed since its establishment in 2012, the impact of the initiative hasn’t been as wide as expected and its intrinsic potentiality not yet fully exploited. This is particularly true for young people: less than 30% of the individuals that participated in the ECIs were under 28. Not only will the project raise awareness on the initiative, but it will also prompt a more active participation from youths. In fact, through the project outputs, the awareness raising campaigns and the learning activities, the project aims at facilitating the whole process, by providing young people and youth workers with information as well as helping them in the development of the required skills for the design of ECI proposals. The use of participatory design as a method to collaborate is expected to engage and motivate young people and create long term impact on their involvement in public policy.

Youth workers and trainees will have the chance to apply it all in the creation of an ECI proposal focused on gender equality. By actively working on a specific topic, the youth participants will go in depth into gender equality and awareness on the status quo while developing important skills.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 228661 Eur

Project Coordinator

COOPERATIVE D’INITIATIVE JEUNES & Country: FR

Project Partners

• RADOSAS IDEJAS
• MAGENTA CONSULTORIA PROJECTS SL
• AINTEK SYMVOULOI EPICHEIRISEON EFARMOGES YPSILIS TECHNOLOGIAS EKPAIDEFSI ANONYMI ETAIREIA
• CENTRO INTERNAZIONALE PER LA PROMOZIONE DELL’EDUCAZIONE E LO SVILUPPO ASSOCIAZIONE
• SYMPLEXIS