Municipalities4Democracy - Democracy Reloading training course for municipality youth officers

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. This calls municipalities and regional public authorities to address the needs and interests of youth, to engage youth as actors of the solutions for their problems, to increase the level of their ownership of and responsibility for their own community and thus to develop the quality of local democracy. We believe that young people if adequately informed, trained, empowered and entrusted they will be the best actors of change and promoters of democracy, rule of law and equality. 

Democracy Relaoding is a program of Erasmus+ Youth national agencies since 2015 that was established as strategic approach of working with local and regional public authorities in planning, developing, maintaining and reforming democratic youth participation structures for dialogue, co-decision and co-management. Based on the lessons learned during the activities of last 5 years a reference model designed out of the competences required for municipalities for engaging youth in decision-making and an online Toolkit as developed to support the development of these competences. This Toolkit is the basis of a long term strategic development plan to address municipalities through the Erasmus + Youth program. It is designed to help youth policy related municipality staff  to become empowered, competent and ready to engage young people into decision making and thus improving active citizenship and democracy in local communities.

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

This training course is designed especially for municipality officers (and their partners) who want to improve their youth policies, structures and programs engaging young people in municipal decision-making with the aim to support the development of their competences (based on the online Toolkit) in youth participation in decision making and in using Erasmus + funding (both on national and international level).

Objectives:

• 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 understand the potentials of Erasmus+ Youth key actions, Democracy Relaoding and Europe Goes Local tools in further developing youth participation in decision-making,
• to identify ways and ideas to further develop the local scene of youth participation in decision-making,

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