Study visit on youth participatory budgeting in Slovenia

The study visit on youth participatory budgeting took place from 14th to 18th October 2025 in Slovenia, gathering 20 youth workers from Slovenia, Croatia, and Portugal to equip them with practices, mechanisms, and models for implementing participatory budgeting for young people within their municipalities, as well as provide space for exchange of practices in the field.

This was the second Study visit of this project, following up on the Study visit to Lisbon organised by DYPALL Network last April.

The programme kicked off with a visit to the municipality of Domžale, where we were welcomed by the Mayor of the Municipality of Domžale and representatives of the Domžale Youth Centre. The hosts presented their experiences with participatory budgeting and showed concrete examples of how citizens can actively participate in shaping community projects. This was followed by a tour of good practices in the field.

Next, we visited the Municipality of Dol pri Ljubljani, where we learned about the method of implementing participatory budgeting in that municipality and how they were implementing lessons learned at the Study visit to Portugal and the inspiration they got from the Municipalities of Almada and Cascais they had visited. We also visited a youth-led community space that was an excellent example of cooperation between the municipality and young people.

The last day of the programme was dedicated to the round table “Participatory budgeting in schools, organisations and city neighbourhoods” held at Ljubljana City Hall, in cooperation with the Youth office of the City of Ljubljana. At the event, participants met with representatives of key stakeholders and examples of good practices – including the Vič Youth Centre, the PIP Institute and the Rog Centre – who presented their experiences in establishing participatory processes at various levels, from local communities to educational institutions. The participants also presented various practices such as “Action for 5!” from Rijeka (Croatia) and Youth participatory budgeting from municipalities of Braga and Valongo (Portugal).

The Study visit was organised by Zavod Nefiks (Slovenia) in cooperation with Delta (Croatia) and DYPALL Network, funded by the Erasmus+ programme through the Slovenian National Agency.