Study visit to Eindhoven “Boosting youth participation at the local level 3”

The Study visit to Eindhoven, “Boosting youth participation at the local level 3”, organised by DYPALL Network, together with ADYNE Netherlands took place from the 15th – 20th of May 2023.

The Study visit is part of the framework of the project “Boosting youth participation in decision-making at the local level 3”, which aims to visit, analyse, experience and explore practices of youth participation in decision-making processes with a special focus on the inclusion of marginalised youth, such as young migrants and young people with a migrant background and especially to share practices that are already being implemented to adapt them to one’s own reality and reinforce existing programs.

During the week, 26 youth workers from CSOs and municipality officers coming from Finland, Italy, Latvia, Netherlands, North Macedonia, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Spain, Sweden, and Turkey, had the opportunity to work together and observe specific projects on the involvement of young migrants in decision-making processes at the local level.

During the sessions, they reflected upon youth participation in decision-making at the local level, shared their own realities, and discussed the challenges and opportunities of youth work in their contexts.

Participants also had the opportunity to visit local realities dealing with youth empowerment, like Popei and Dynamo Youth Centre, and to talk directly to young people in the Jong040, the Youth Council of the municipality.

In the final part of the program, participants were asked to present their work at the local level in a creative way and to draft some actions for the future, developing local strategies and an action plan.

The main objectives were:

• To explore, experience and understand the specific challenges in youth  participation for young migrants and young people with a migrant background;
• To visit examples of good practices based upon interaction with the project organizations and to filter out elements to transfer to own reality;
• To offer possibilities for long-term partnership building among organizations active in the field of youth participation at the local level for future projects;
• To create a collection of best practices of participation of youth participation for young migrants and young people with a migrant background.

The Study visit is the second of the two activities of the “Boosting youth participation at local level 3” project, following the Study visit to Vila Nova de Gaia, Portugal, that took place in November 2022. The activity was organised by DYPALL Network in cooperation with ADYNE Netherland, funded by the Dutch National Agency of the Erasmus + Programme.