Description
The project is designed to develop, structure and merge existing activities to improve public participation and consult youth interests in Lower Silesia in order to streamline these measure and to strengthen their impact. Specific measures will include: supporting and integrating local initiatives by organising seminars, training, conferences and by developing a youth council portal, forming new local councils and proposing new youth-designed policies. The main target group will be youth in a local community setting. As a result, young people will learn to express and represent their interest at the local level, including the ability to take part in policy review and policy formulation. The project will directly target 15 municipalities and counties (at least 250 young leaders altogether). The project will involve all local stakeholders, including local council and NGOs.
Summary of project results
"According to the research conducted by Youth Partnership (Partnership of the Council of Europe and the European Commission for youth), only 3 per cent of young Poles aged 15-24 declare being interested in politics and over 43 per cent think that politics is too complicated to understand it. And the research done by CBOS (Public Opinion Research Centre) in 2012 shows that 47 per cent of Poles believe that they do not have any impact on the current situation both on the national and on the local level. The Youth Partnership also points out that young people in Europe get less and less interested in social and political life. However, understanding of functioning of local governments structures determines youth public participation and contributes to creating a cohesive society. Municipality youth councils is one of forms of improving youth public participation. When the project started, only 20 per cent of municipalities in the Lower Silesia had such councils, but they were not very active and they did not, on the average, last longer than 2 years. The project aimed to increase participation of young people in decision-making processes of the Lower Silesian voivodship authorities. The aim was also to gather, join and develop the already functioning activities targeted at public participation and consultation of youth interests in Lower Silesia in order to increase their coherence and strengthen their impact. The project implementation resulted in creating or reactivating 9 municipality youth councils in which 200 youth leaders from several municipalities and counties in Lower Silesia work or cooperate with. During the project implementation, several activities to support and integrate the local initiatives were conducted: seminars, training, conferences and a portal for cooperation among youth communities. The project beneficiaries were young people and their communities in Lower Silesia, including local governments. The project partner was Nordisk Institutt for Trening og Internasjonal Nettverk from Norway, which was responsible for presenting good practices in working with youth in the Scandinavian countries, preparing a study visit, cooperating in conducting the final conference and evaluation of the project implementation."
Summary of bilateral results
The Norwegian partner shared its experience in improving youth public participation and running similar projects, offered its support during the evaluation process; the participants and trainers learned about good youth participation practices in Norway, learned about different perspectives on youth programmes, observed practices that are now replicated in Poland; the association strengthened its relationship with the Norwegian partner and both organisation enhanced its potential and capacity to implement similar joint projects in the future; youth councillors learned about the benefits of international co-operation and planned further international projects with Norwegian partners.