“Policy & Advocacy in Local Youth Councils” – International Training Course in Bacău, Romania

From 12th to 17th October 2026, Bacău hosted the second International Training Course of the ECE-LYCE project. Active members and support staff of Local Youth Councils from 8 countries met in North-East Romania to explore how youth councils can move beyond formal representation and actually influence the decisions that shape young people’s lives in their cities.

Hosted by the Romanian Youth Movement for Democracy Association (RYMD) at Zbor Hub, its new youth centre, the course combined interactive sessions, field work, group work, simulations and peer learning. Participants started by looking at where their councils stand, using the ladder of participation and the Quality Charter on participatory and inclusive Local Youth Councils. They then got to know the local context through recent research on young people in Bacău, an overview of youth participation in Romania, and the experience of Bacău’s own Local Youth Council.

A city walk sent participants out to observe how Bacău makes room for young people, or fails to, and to gather evidence such as photos, quotes and notes. In the Solutions Lab, groups turned what they had seen into concrete proposals, each with a clear first step. One of the highlights was the visit to the Municipality of Bacău, where participants met Mayor Lucian Viziteu and talked about youth participation, cooperation between young people and the City Hall, and ideas from their own communities.

The second half of the programme focused on advocacy. Participants exchanged advocacy mechanisms and tools that already work in their countries, learned to map power and build messages that combine a clear ask, evidence and a story, and put it all to the test in “Riverton City”, a simulation built around a stakeholder meeting called to revive a struggling youth council. In the campaign lab, they worked out strategy, tactics, channels and timelines, and they also practiced a method for keeping their own teams accountable without turning it into conflict.

By the end of the week, every group had designed and pitched an advocacy campaign, and each participant left with a personal action plan, including concrete first steps for the next 90 days back home.

The training course is part of the project “Engage, Connect and Empower – Local Youth Councils in Europe” (ECE-LYCE), coordinated by DYPALL Network in partnership with Delta (Croatia), Klaipėda Youth Organisations Association (Lithuania), the National Youth Council of Serbia – KOMS (Serbia), the Danish Network of Local Youth Councils (Denmark), the Finnish Association of Youth Councils (Finland) and the Romanian Youth Movement for Democracy (Romania). The project is co-funded by the European Union through Erasmus+ KA3 – European Youth Together.