Youth Takes the Floor – Training Course

The Youth Takes the Floor Training Course, organized by DYPALL Network, took place from 28th October – 4th November in Fundão and Lisbon (Portugal).

The Training Course was designed for municipality officers, youth workers and members of youth councils or other participation mechanisms within the municipality (local governance). The training gathered 23 participants from Denmark, Portugal, Italy, Macedonia, Poland, Slovenia, Slovakia, Lithuania, and Hungary to explore the state of art of Youth Participation in Europe in what concerns to structures, instruments, and mechanisms of participation of young people. The TC also brought insights and experiences in how to develop sustainable and inclusive engagement of young people in decision-making processes by involving different stakeholders.

TC “Youth takes the floor” set as its overall objective to develop youth participation structures and instruments that enable young people to engage as active actors in the designing of solutions for the challenges in their local communities and, at the same time, allowing local and regional authorities to address more closely the needs and interests of young people. By the end of the TC participants could develop local action plans and strategies to strength Youth Participation in their different contexts and communities and thorough knowledge on how to create and run in a sustainable way structures for youth participation.  

During the Training Course the participants had the opportunity to visit Fundão municipality and took part in interesting discussions on what an ideal local youth council looks like. They also visited Cascais – European Youth Capital and Department of Citizenship and Participation and learned about impressive practices of youth participation in decision-making at the local level, such as the participatory budget.

The activity was organized by DYPALL, Ung Egedal and Municipality of Fundão with the support of Erasmus + programme.