Description
Regarding the reduced capacity of civic involvement into the decision-making process at local level, the project ”Initiative for my community!” proposed by Qvorum Institute aims at raising the civic involvement in the decision making process. The project`s objectives consists in empowerment with regard to the functioning of the public administration system, raising the level of civic and participatory culture and rasining the civic spirit for active involvement of 350 youngsters aged between 16 and 24 from South-Muntenia Region. The project's results: raising awareness over active citizenship and democratic values, raising the active involvement of members of the civic society into the local decision-making process and development of partnerships with the local public authorities. These will be achieved by developing a series of innovative approaches such as: trainings, work visits to local policymakers, creating and organizing local initiative groups.
Summary of project results
Project ”Initiative for my community!” implemented by Qvorum Institute aimed at raising the civic involvement in the decision making process at local level. The project`s objectives consisted in empowerment with regards to the functioning of the public administration system, raising the level of civic and participatory culture and the civic spirit for active involvement of 363 youngsters aged 16 to 24 (high school students and college students) from 7 counties of South-Muntenia Region. The participants had the opportunity not only to acquire theoretical information about several key subjects such as the functioning of the public administration system, active citizenship and democratic values, entrepreneurship, anti-discrimination, no hate speech and gender equality, but also to take part in work visits with local policymakers, simulations of the working sessions of the Local Council and to create Local Initiative Groups, so that they could apply the knowledge they gained in their community. Thus, 7 local initiative groups have been created in: Pitești (Argeș County), Târgoviște (Dâmbovița County), Ploiești (Prahova County), Giurgiu (Giurgiu County), Călărași (Călărași County), Slobozia (Ialomița County) and Alexandria (Teleorman County). Most active 28 youngsters were invited to participate in a study and networking visit to Bucharest. For 4 days, participants had the opportunity to attend a series of trainings on leadership, personal development and project management and to visit the House of Parliament, where they assisted to an open lesson about participatory democracy at the Chamber of Deputies. The lesson ended with a role-play game, where the participants could draft a legislative proposal, by themselves. During this study and networking visit, participants had the opportunity to talk about the problems in their communities, the solutions they propose in their local initiative groups and to find out best practices from each other. The project team has further supported these local initiatives groups by maintaining regular contact and know-how transfer.
Summary of bilateral results