2009 You have a choice !

Duration: 1.12.2009-31.10.2010

Brief description

2009 was the year when inhabitants of Thuringia were asked four times to elect their political representatives for the municipal council, regional parliament (Landtag), national parliament (Bundestag) and the European Parliament. In its Polish partner region – Malopolska, as well as in all of the EU countries, elections for the European Parliament were also taking place.

30 young people from Germany and Poland were qualified in an on-going training course to run interactive workshops on the topic of  the importance of participation in a democratic society and political issues concerning the upcoming elections. Workshops in vocational training centres and schools took place in four phases (three in Germany and one in Poland) followingthe elections. The workshops were followed by discussion forums with politicians representing all the democratic parties running for election.  Besides schools, the workshops , also took place in a reformatory, a centre for people with disabilities, youth clubs, army barracks and a municipality town hall.

The project was accompanied by a cartoon-postcard and poster campaign “We vote!”. There was also a website and various publications published in both of the languages.

Website

Objectives

• Increased turnout of young people, especially those having the chance to vote for the first time, in the coming elections
• Discussion on the meaning of elections and active participation in a democratic society
• Young people should understand the way local, regional, national and European politics function and how they influence everyone’s daily lives
• Encourage critical analysis of politics and development of own opinion on current issues, and provide the young people with the basic knowledge to make this analysis possible
• Debate extreme-right and antidemocratic arguments

How did your idea come up ?

State Agency for Civic Education Thuringia was running a similar project but on a much smaller scale before the previous elections in the region. Evaluation and research accompanying the project have proven to be a big success. The project run in 2009 was intended to be bigger, more professional, and include the international aspect of cooperation with Poland.

Beneficiary

young adults in vocational training or doing military service, young people with fewer opportunities (social, economic and geographical obstacles, educational difficulties and/or disabilities) mainly between the ages of 18 and 22

Partnership

Landeszentrale für politische Bildung Thüringen – State Agency for Civic Education Thuringia, Germany

European Youth Education and Meeting Center Weimar (EJBW), Germany

Marschal’s Office of the Malopolska Region, Poland

Polish-German Society, Krakow, Poland

Pitfalls/difficulties

• Since not all of the multipliers were active in all the phases of the project, continuity and the ability to call on previous experiences about contents and methods of the workshops were sometimes missing (a mid-term evaluation seminar would be recommended).
• Development of concrete strategies about dealing with participants with an extreme-right background was underestimated.
• Verbal agreements with contact persons at schools / organisations about the framework of the workshops were not always clear and caused misunderstandings.

Strong points

• Over 6000 young people participated in the workshops in various locations in Malopolska and in Thuringia
• Work with a target group which only seldom participates in civic education projects
• Bringing civic education and politics to schools where there is no social studies curriculum
• Aspect of peer-to-peer education – training of 30 young multipliers who run the workshops
• Intercultural Polish-German context of the project
• Dialogue with politicians who participated in discussion forums with young people

Budget

Ca. 100.000 Euro