Municipalities4Democracy - A youth participation training for municipalities

If you want the young people in your municipality to be actively engaged and involved you need to involve them in decision making and development of youth policies. Municipalities and regional public authorities should therefore commit to:

• address the needs and interests of youth, 
• involve youth in decisions influencing their lives, 
• work to increase their level of ownership of and responsibility for their own community, 

With this commitment you will develop the quality of your local democracy. We believe that when young people are informed, trained, empowered and entrusted they will be better actors of change and promoters of democracy. 

About Democracy Reloading

Democracy Reloading is a long-term cooperation project. Since 2015 several National Agencies within Erasmus+ Youth have cooperated to strengthen the youth participation at local and regional level across Europe. Based on the lessons learned during these years we have made an online toolkit to support youth workers and other municipality staff in this process. The tool identifies which skills, knowledge, values and structures are needed to ensure real youth participation, and can help your municipality evaluate how well you actually work on this.  

The Toolkit is available here: https://democracy-reloading.eu 

Objectives of this training course

• to share experience of the participants regarding local youth participation in decision-making,
• to understand the content and the functions of the online Toolkit, and the prepare the participants for further independent use,
• to identify ways and ideas for your municipality to further develop the local youth participation, 
• to understand the potential for municipalities to use the Erasmus+ Youth programme and its funding opportunities to achieve this

Expected profile of participants:

• Municipality staff (or their intermediators) who are planning (in the near future) or now implementing youth participation in municipal decision-making,
• Who can participate in English language fluently in the training course (both spoken and written),
• Priority will be given to those who have experience in implementing Eramus + and Solidarity Corps projects with the topic of democratic youth participation

Who is this training course for?

• Youth workers, youth council coordinators, decision makers and other municipal staff who want to improve the youth participation in local decision-making,
• Participants must be able to follow the training in English language,
• Priority will be given to those who are interested in implementing Erasmus + and Solidarity Corps projects with the topic of democratic youth participation

The methodology of the training course is based on non-formal expereintial learning. Participants will share their expereince and practicies, there will be few presentations by experts and most of the sessions will be interactive and participatory. The Democracy Reloading Toolkit will be presented in more details and the trainers will show ways of integrating and using the Toolkit in the municipal policy and work context.