Fostering a Culture of Participation: Mainstreaming Local Youth Councils in Europe – 1st Transnational Project Meeting

The first in-person Transnational Project Meeting of the project “Fostering a Culture of Participation: Mainstreaming Local Youth Councils in Europe” took place on the 18th-19th of October. The meeting was hosted by Comune di Collegno in Collegno (Italy) and gave the opportunity for project partners to get to know each other and exchange the different models of the local youth councils in the participating countries.

During the meeting, the partners had the possibility to meet the Major of the Collegno municipality and visit two local youth councils in Alpignano and Almese to reflect on the different structures, instruments, and mechanisms that describe their approach for engaging young people as active actors in the decision-making processes.

The aim of this project is to develop a study on good practices and models of local youth councils implementing these objectives:

• Map current practices and structures of Local Youth Councils in the participating countries in order to extract key learnings in order to improve the existing structures;
• Develop competencies of the stakeholders involved in the Local Youth Councils;
• Raise awareness and improve the knowledge of the pedagogical and civic purpose of Local Youth Council in the democratic education of youth;
• Foster the quality, impact, reach and evaluation processes of Local Youth Councils, as standards for youth participation in the decision-making process;
• Advocate and mainstream the development of Local Youth Councils in Europe as crucial instruments of youth participation.

The project is implemented by DYPALL Network in cooperation with Creccide (Belgium), Città di Collegno (Italy), KRAPINSKO-ZAGORSKA ZUPANIJA (Croatia) and Mladinski svet Ajdovščina (Slovenia). It is funded under the Erasmus+ KA2 Exchange of Good practices programme by the BIJ – Bureau International Jaunesse National Agency.