Training Course on “Developing Participatory Based Projects”

This training course (TC) is designed for youth workers and local government representatives. The training will mostly address the issue of low capacities of Youth
activists and initiatives for taking over proactive role in democracy development and community building.

The training will bring together 15 participants from Belgium, Italy, North Macedonia, Portugal and Poland and will provide space to increase the competences on meaningful participation in terms of exploring new tools and methods to promote youth participation in the decision making processes in their local community, particularly addressing cooperation with public authorities.

The training will thus involve youth and local government representatives with the aim to increase their capacity to truly understand each-others role in the local community life, capacity and potential to achieve consensus on issues that should always be subject of consultation and citizens participation, capacity to operate with information received during the training, capacity to communicate and negotiate on the local level. Participants will have chance to develop projects for implementing youth participation structures at the local level.

Objectives:

TC "Development of participatory based project" sets as its overall objective to increase the capacity of youth workers and local government representatives to truly understand each-others role in the local community and exploring new tools and methods to promote youth participation in the decision making processes.

The specific objectives are: 

• to increase the knowledge, skills and attitudes of the participation in terms of exploring new tools and methods to promote youth participation in the decision making processes in their local community, particularly addressing cooperation with public authorities;
• To share realities about the situation of youth participation in their communities, their obstacles and challenges in order to increase youth participation at local level;
• To understand the core principles of participation and youth engagement;
• To explore different participatory methodologies to increase the sense of belonging and engagement of youth and in particular of youth in disadvantage situations;
• To developing participants' competences towards the introduction and utilization of the quality guidelines for democracy projects development and of peer to peer development of local actions for community strategic plans.

Participants' profile

The training is designed for youth workers, members of youth councils and representatives of local government. Moreover, the participants must:

• Be able to work in English;
• Be willing to contribute with their experience to the TC;
• Be coming from Belgium, Italy, North Macedonia, Portugal and Poland (no other counties can be accepted);
• Be able to attend the whole duration of the TC;
• Have relevant experience in the topic of youth participation at local level, particularly in decision-making processes;
• Highly motivated towards learning about youth participation decision-making processes at the local level.

We are targeting the following profiles per country:
1. Local youth policy representative working within the municipality;
2. Local youth worker or project manager working with and for young people from disadvantaged communities or minorities;
3. Engaged in civic initiatives that advocate their engagement in decision making;
4. Member or working with youth councils or other participation mechanisms within the municipality;