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Description
The project aims to strengthen the potential of the Youth Municipal Council in the Starachowice Municipality, as well as to activate young people and make them more integrated with the local community. We will help residents acquire knowledge and skills that are nowadays crucial in personal and social development. We will carry out social campaigns, organise meetings with residents, civic debates and a series of training sessions in the areas of environmental, media, civic and intercultural education. Furthermore, we will hold a meeting for the Youth Municipal Council aimed at establishing the Council’s vision, goals and a plan of activities to carry out jointly with the mayor and councillors. During this event, young people will develop soft skills, including teamwork and meetings facilitation. In order to exchange good practices, we invited, as a partner, an organisation from Croatia with a lot of experience in conducting civic and intercultural education. The partner of the project is also the local government of the Starachowice Municipality. Thanks to our local and international partners, we will be more effective in engaging young people in actions to be taken in the local community and better integrate various social groups, including those at risk of social exclusion (such as seniors, people with disabilities, Ukrainian citizens, young people struggling with social, language or health problems, etc.). The project will involve decision-makers at various levels, from local to European, who will debate with young people and help them draw up their demands. We will also invite people representing science and the NGOs. The recommendations and demands developed during the project will be passed on to decision-makers at local, national and European levels.
Summary of project results
The project was created to respond to the needs of young people. Its aim was to activate young people, improve their social competences and knowledge in key topics for the future, and give them a chance for self-development and integration with the local community, while strengthening their potential.
Therefore, the main goal of the project was to encourage young people to consciously participate in social life through the organization of training and social initiatives and greater integration of young people with the local community.
The project was part of the EU Youth Strategy and was the basis for developing new demands and new activities in the new reality and being the voice of the youth of Świętokrzyskie in times of crisis. We wanted to encourage young people to be active citizens, advocates of solidarity and positive change, inspired by EU values and European identity, and
promote the social inclusion of young people and encourage them to engage in social life.
We could not afford to waste talents, social exclusion or decreasing involvement among young people. Young people should not only be the architects of their own lives, but also contribute to positive changes in society. For young people to fully benefit from EU action, it must reflect their aspirations, creativity and talents
and respond to their needs.
In the first stage, we focused on MRM (Youth City Council) Starachowice councilors and the development of their activities and soft skills. In March 2022, a training was conducted in which the objectives of MRM''s activities were set and activities were planned for the coming years.
In the following months, we invited young people from Starachowice to participate in a number of workshops tailored to their needs. We focused on topics that are interesting to young people but not often discussed at school, such as ecology, media, civic education and intercultural education.
Under the supervision of great experts from Poland and Croatia, young people had the opportunity not only to develop their competences during training, but also to test what they learned in practice. Then, in May, we held a Youth Civic Festival combined with a knowledge competition about Norway, an ecological picnic and a series of table discussions (world cafe) on environmental and civic issues. The festival was an opportunity to present the project, organize civic debates, an ecological campaign, interviews with residents and greater integration of the inhabitants of Starachowice.
In November, young people from Starachowice took part in a study visit to Osijek in Croatia. Participants of the study visit talked, shared experiences and established future cooperation.
In retrospect, we notice the significant impact of the project on the functioning of our association and the Youth City Council of Starachowice. In December 2022, the next term of office of MRM Starachowice began, which consists of people who became involved in social activities through training and activities carried out as part of this project. The new chairwoman of MRM Starachowice - Klaudia - became involved in social activities during the intercultural education training and in such a short time, thanks to the activities in this project, she developed and turned out to be the perfect person for this position.
People are probably the long-term result of this project. Those whom we and they got to know each other. When announcing activities, several new people always came forward and stayed with us for a longer time. Thanks to the Youth Civic Compass in Starachowice, the so-called a network of young people who come from different backgrounds, schools and are of different ages, but who are to some extent involved in this project, have made friends with each other and continue to work with us.
Now we are able to use this result for our future projects and continuity in the activities of MRM Starachowice and young people in the city.
The project showed us a strong need to organize activities such as training, events and study visits. We will use this project as a basis for subsequent proposals, more focused on specific topics raised by young people during all activities.