“North-South Cooperation for Local Youth Participation” Partnership Building Activity

The “North-South Cooperation for Local Youth Participation” Partnership Building Activity (PBA) took place from 4th to 9th April 2022 in Portimão, Portugal. Municipality representatives and youth workers from Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Lithuania, Estonia, Turkey, Bulgaria, Italy, Spain, and Portugal gathered to learn and explore ways in which they can develop and implement cooperation projects in the field of youth participation with the support of European programmes.

The PBA was organised by DYPALL Network in cooperation with Ölands Folkhögskola in the framework of Erasmus+ program, funded by the Swedish National Agency. The activity was based on non-formal education methodologies, promoting a healthy critical attitude toward innovative solutions and approaches; the participants had the opportunity to share their experience and good practices and to create future cooperation and partnerships.

This PBA’s main goals were to assess the participants’ expertise in outilining European project applications, increase participants’ knowledge about the Erasmus+ programmes, strengthen their tools to develop cooperation partnership at the international level and increase their competences to develop youth participation projects successfully.

From this activity, the participants identified needs, drafted future cooperation projects, and presented action plans to further shape and implement their ideas. Moreover, the participants increased their awareness regarding the importance of strengthening democracies through improving and ensuring youth participation.

In conclusion, this PBA was a great opportunity for building future and durable partnerships among civil society organisations and municipalities to create projects with greater local youth impact.