DEMOCRACY RELOADED: Dialogue between public authorities and young people

The involvement of young people in developing youth policies and in decision making is fundamental to increase the sense of belonging and active citizenship of young people to their communities. Involvement in a broader dimension: when youth has an active voice and is a fundamental actor of the development of their local communities, of decision-making processes, shaping local policies. This enables municipalities and regional public authorities to address the needs and interests of youth, at the same time that will contribute to engage youth as active actors of the solutions for their problems, increasing the level of ownership, compromise and involvement of an important part of our communities that is many times neglected on this level. For this it is crucial to develop a new culture of youth participation, especially with regard to decision-making processes on issues that are of direct concern and interest of young people. Youth should be looked at as a source of solutions for our social problems; their extraordinary energy, creativity and potential for change can largely contribute to the development of our communities. This training course aims to allow youth leaders, youth workers,local and regional public authority officers dealing with youth to work together to develop the necessary competences to efficiently plan, implement, sustain and reform local participative structures such as local youth councils, youth forums and/or other spaces of permanent structured dialogue and co-management at the local level. Objectives of the TC: • to map and describe the relevant competences for local and regional public authorities that are required for designing, constructing and sustaining participative structures for young people; • to develop these competences of youth leaders, youth workers and municipality representatives(dealing with youth) to provide space to strengthen cooperation and understanding among local and regional authorities and youth organizations; • to develop understanding on how Structured Dialogue can be introduced in youth work on local and regional level, fostering the quality of results at national and European level; • to support the development of strategies and action plans for fostering youth participation processes and the development of structures and instruments of structured dialogue and co-management at local and regional level; • to provide information about the funding mechanism of Erasmus+ and in particular KA3; • to improve the quality and impact of projects developed under KA3 of the Erasmus+ programme; • To create space for finding potential partners and networking for future projects under Erasmus+ in the youth field. The training course also aims to allow to work together with representatives of local and regional public authorities and youth organisations active at regional or local level. Therefore, we would encourage your organisation/institution also to invite a representative of a youth organization or municpality to apply together to attend this activity. By working together, we will reinforce the commitment from the two sides to implement the competences developed during this training course.