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Description
A student council has a potential to be a mentoring institution that could help prepare young people become active and conscious citizens. The research shows that very few students and teachers have the knowledge on how a student council body works or is willing to engage with it. We have conducted our own research that showed the youth in our region is feeling powerless, while school-led initiatives are rarely completed. We will address this problem by training 30 representatives of student councils and their guardians. Together we will work on ideas for activities, implementation plans, as well as talk about self-governance and the needs of our participants’ schools. After visiting our project partners, students will work on ideas specific to their schools. Three schools will receive funding for the student council initiatives. Finally, together with the municipality of Płużnica, the students will design a cooperation plan between the student council and the local government. Two primary schools from Wąbrzeski District will be our partners in the project. They will facilitate meetings and outreach to the youth and teachers, as well as support the collaboration with their local government. Municipality of Płużnica, well known for its exemplary functioning and organization, will also serve as our partner in the project. Administration officials will support the youth in planning their collaboration with the local government and will promote the project among other local governments around the district. Norway-based International Organization for Democracy and Human Rights (IODHR), an organization experienced in working with the youth and in support of civic rights and democracy, will be our final partner. A group of students and teachers will visit IODHR and study the best practices and examples of building civic engagement among the youth. Afterwards they will create and implement similar ideas at their schools.
Summary of project results
A student council has a potential to be a place that could help prepare young people become active and conscious citizens. The research shows that very few students and teachers have the knowledge on how a student council body works, or is willing to engage with it. We have conducted our own research that showed the youth in our region is feeling powerless, while school-led initiatives are rarely completed.We have addressed this issue by training representatives from student councils and their guardians. Together, we worked on ideas for activities, implementation plans, as well as talked about self-governance and the school needs of our participants. We hired a person to work with student councils interested in participation in implementing their ideas, actions, and electoral campaigns, so that more students may become interested in actively engaging in their activities. After visiting our project partners, students worked on ideas specific to their schools. We have supported financially five of their initiatives. Together with the municipality of Płużnica, the students designed a cooperation plan between the student council and the local government. Finally, we have organized a gala for the student councils and representatives from the municipality.Two primary schools from our District, that were our partners in the project,facilitated meetings and outreach to the youth and teachers, as well as supported the collaboration with their local government.Officials from our second partner Municipality of Płużnica supported the youth in their collaboration with the local government and promoted the project among other municipalities in the district. Norway-based International Organization for Democracy and Human Rights experienced in working with the youth and in support of civic rights and democracy, was our final partner. A group of students and teachers visited our partner and had the opportunity to study the best practices and examples of building civic engagement among the youth.Our observations and conversations confirm that both the youth and the adults have increased their knowledge about student councils and youth initiatives. For the first time, students, especially from Płużnica municipality, had an opportunity to talk with authorities from their municipality. A lasting result of our project is the ongoing collaboration between the student council and the Płużnica municipality. We are already planning next collaboration with our Norwegian partner.
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Summary of bilateral results
The whole process, from gaining a partner to implementing the project together, was a new experience for our organisation. Our idea was to receive expert support and to bring a new quality to the implementation of our projects. Thanks to the partner from Norway, our perspective has broadened considerably. Our joint activity was to organise and conduct a study visit to Oslo. It involved students, teachers and our activists. The hard result was the development of a list of solutions to implement in our district, which were inspired by the experiences of the visit. We translated the knowledge gained into proposals for concrete solutions. The results of this partnership exceeded our expectations, and what surprised us most was how much this experience supported our activists and our organisation. We believed that we could, and so far we have stuck to this belief. We plan to continue working together, but for now we do not have the resources. We are in contact with our partner.