International Cooperation for Inclusive and Powerful Local Youth Councils Erasmus Project

Project Title

International Cooperation for Inclusive and Powerful Local Youth Councils

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 2018

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Inclusion – equity; Youth (Participation, Youth Work, Youth Policy)

Project Summary

The project ‘International cooperation for inclusive and powerful Local Youth Councils’ was implemented to increase the participation of young people in public life, particularly in local decision-making processes. Within the initiative of three organisations from Poland, Spain and France the project focused on youth councils as a tool of participation. Putting together experience from and knowledge of different fields (local youth policy, social inclusion, decision-making process and active European citizenship), some new approaches and methods of work to empower local youth councils were developed. The aim was also to promote further this inclusive and diverse format and therefore to keep facilitating young people in having more influence on decision-making processes regarding issues that affect their daily lives. Most ideas, methods and approaches presented and discussed were based on the experience and expertise of people engaged professionally in developing the youth council model, further complemented by partner organisations and young councillors’ research enriched by perspective of non-experienced participants who would like to be more actively involved in the political, social and cultural life of their communities.

Local youth councils should be a bridge between local authorities and local youth – consult with young people ideas and actions of local authorities and collect the ideas from youth to pass them on to local authorities. The process should teach youth critical thinking and youth councils should be consultative bodies for local authorities so their decisions could correspond to the needs of young residents from different social groups. To strengthen this potential of local youth councils by cocreating the new approach and methods we invited to collaborate youth councillors (as well as those who do not participate in youth councils yet, but interested in engaging in public life), youth workers engaged in working with youth councils (as well as youth work in broader spectrum), representatives of municipalities including those engaged generally in youth policy. Besides conducting local meetings and researches for co-creating publication and online course, Partners worked together on four transnational partner meetings and three transnational trainings activities: blended mobility of young people and two short-term training events. Trough transnational cooperation with usage of interactive, no-formal methods and joint work on the results the representatives of different communities from Poland, France and Spain could exchange good practices and find solutions and approaches which could be adapted in respect of different national realities in each country regarding the youth participation, youth policy and youth council model.

Within the project’s activities many new and fruitful partnerships at local, regional and national level were set up by each Partner and the existing cooperation with local and regional networks, youth councils, youth organisations and municipalities have been reinforced. The multiplier events were organised in the form of meetings including group work, presentations, debates and workshops as the ones organised for representatives of over 25 youth organisations (including youth councils) from the region of Valencia; the conference in Warsaw with the elements of panel discussions with experts and facilitated group work with attendance of over 40 representatives of youth councils, including representatives of local NGOs, institutions, local governments, politicians and experts on youth participation. In France the presentations of project’ results and intellectual outputs completed with relevant discussions were held in one of the local high school in Angoulême with participation of over 50 school students and educators interested in developing youth participation topics.

As a results of researches, exchange of good practices and common work of youth workers, youth councillors, experts and practitioners from three different European countries The Manual was created and published in 4 languages (English, Polish, Spanish and French). The publication covers such topics as national realities including youth polices in Partner countries, how to set up and manage the youth council, thematic areas of youth councils activities, cooperation with the stakeholders in the local communities and tips and recommendations how to build and facilitate an inclusive model. The second output basing on the Manual structure and topics is an online course (in the form of MOOC – Massive Open Online Course) to provide all interested people with more interactive tool of getting know about youth councils and to create forums that help build a community for the youth, youth-workers and the decision-makers. Both, publications and online course are available in internet under the license Creative Commons CC BY NC SA (attribution No Commercial Share Alike).

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 102943,25 Eur

Project Coordinator

POLSKA FUNDACJA IM. ROBERTA SCHUMANA & Country: PL

Project Partners

• CONSEJO DE LA JUVENTUD DE LA COMUNIDAD VALENCIANA
• TERA-MAISON DE L’EUROPE DE LA CHARENTE