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Description
The project aims to develop the civic competences of 205 young people (5 students in administrative sciences and 200 students in 10 high schools) from under-served areas in the South Muntenia Region, as well as to improve their participation rate in solving the problems faced by the communities they live in. In this regard, they will participate in trainings aimed at responding to the deep causes that determine the reduced participation of citizens in the democratic life of the community, and which target to: (a) reduce the barriers caused by the not knowing the specific concepts of the local administration and the reduced understanding of how they work; (b) educating young people about their civic rights and obligations and the tools to exercise them; (c) enhancing their competences to substantiate and support their ideas and solutions. These measures are intended to improve the role of young people, transforming them from passive actors, dissatisfied with the performance of local institutions and the quality of public services into active and credible partners. With the support and guidance of the project team, young people will use public participation tools to analyze, on a voluntary basis, the administrative capacity of the institutions in the local administration and to base their proposals for solving the problems of the community. They will also debate with the local authorities of the 5 cities along with 20 representatives of the stakeholders from each of them. At the end of the project, experts in the field of administrative sciences will make recommendations regarding the identified problems and the proposed solutions, debating them during a final event. The project team consists of academics in the field covered by the project, as well as civic activists with long experience in actions dedicated to young people and monitoring and advocacy in relation to public administration.
Summary of project results
The project run between Jan’21 and Feb ’22 has started with the selection of 7 students to become project volunteers. They have attended a ToT program, structured in two components – active citizenship and civic education, and training methods. Teams of volunteers and the 2 trainers have delivered 10 civic education workshops for over 210 high school students in Mizil, Oltenița, Curtea de Argeș, Turnu Măgurele si Moreni (the Southern Region). During the first day of the workshops, students have learned about the functioning of the local public administration and the mechanisms to actively participate to the community life. For the second day of the workshop, youth have worked individually or in groups to identify the problems their communities are facing and to suggest solutions to address these. Both problems and solutions identified where translated into questions for the local authorities (25 free access to information requests with 20 questions/ city) and questionnaires (25 questions) for the local communities’ members, with the aim of performing an in-depth assessment. The analysis of the information collected has been performed by the youth, supported by the project experts. Conclusions have been subject to debate by local communities. Debates in Nov – Dec ’21 (5) has focused on identifying local priorities as a response to the problems identified. The 5 debates Jan-Feb ’22 aimed to identify ways of involving youth in supporting local development. 2 additional debates have been organized to discuss a Strategy and an action plan for engaging youth in local and central development activities. Conclusions of the assessment carried out during the project and feedback from the debates have been included in the final publication, launched during the closing conference (24 Feb). By the end of the project, youth not only gained additional knowledge on active citizenship, but they also has the chance to experience these by engaging into an active dialogue with local authorities and stakeholders, as well as with central authorities, which is an additional achievement of the project. Las but not the least, the Applicant has also benefit from the internaction with said stakeholders, improving its visibility and its opportunities to future partnerships.