Conference “Youth Participation Matters”

The Conference “Youth Participation Matters” took place on the 11th June 2019, in Lisbon Youth Centre, Portugal.

The Conference joined youth workers from civil society organisations and municipalities, as well as representatives of local youth councils and other relevant stakeholders on the discussion of practices of youth participation in the decision-making processes for the democratic development of European society.

The central event of the Conference was the presentation of the Study conducted by each partner organisation at the national level, followed by debates on the presented models and examples.

During the morning, the focus of the conference consisted of sharing practices of mechanisms and structures of youth participation in decision-making processes in the local governance, being the practices shared: the Committee for Citizens Dialogue, by Piotr Krzystek (Poland),  Forum dei Giovani di Angri, by Enrico Elefante (Italy), youth engagement and the structured dialogue at the local level, by Alessio Lupi (Belgium), and the development of local youth policies in 12 municipalities, by Florim Rexhepi (North Macedonia).

The afternoon program focused also on sharing practices on educational projects, initiatives, and tools that prepare young people to participate in the political life at the local level, where each partner organisations had the space to share their experiences and conclusions, being this practices the YouthKrakHack, presented by Barbara Mos and Damian Szwed (Poland), the Go Deep project, by Roberto Rossetto (Italy), Map4Youth, by Daniele Codato (Belgium), the #IzboriSe – a campaign for engaging young people to vote, by Florim Rexhepi (North Macedonia), and the project MyPolis, presented by Maria Pignatelli (Portugal).

After the demonstration of the result of the mapping exercise and the subsequent discussions, there was a Round table in “Innovation in experiencing democracy”, talking about the obstacles and opportunities brought by new means of communication, technology and the ways in which youth participation makes itself visible on the public sphere.

This Conference was the final activity of the “Youth participation matters” a long-term project organized by DYPALL Network and its partners ARS for Progress of People (Belgium), CID (North Macedonia), Europe4Youth (Poland) and FRG Campania (Italy), with the support of Lisbon Youth Centre, in the framework of Erasmus + Key Action 2: Cooperation for innovation and the exchange of good practices, managed by the Portuguese National Agency.

On the 12th June, there was a partners’ meeting regarding the next steps of the publication of the study being developed within the project. In parallel, the participants had the opportunity of getting to know more about Lisbon Youth Centre’s infrastructures and activities towards engaging young people.

 

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