YOU.CO.DE Young community developers

In recent years, there have been a growing number of initiatives promoting and strengthening youth involvement at very different levels – international, regional, national and local. New tools have also been created for those working in this area. Nevertheless, referring to “European Youth: Participation in Democratic Life”, Survey from 2013, 44 % of the respondents youth did not take part in the activities of any organisation within the past year. Other researches also reveal that lack of youth participation is a serious issue all around Europe. It also true that successful example of youth participation are often unknown, especially when it comes to youth-led projects in local communities. Starting from these considerations, the international Seminar of the project “YOUCODE – Young Community Developers” has been planned with the main aim of starting a virtuous process to develop the skills of European organizations in the field of youth-led project management in the community development field for the creation of a strong network of youth organizations and young leaders that will cooperate in a long term perspective becoming a resource also for the other organizations all over Europe who wants to grow in this field. Specific objectives: - sharing a common understanding of youth participation, European active citizenship and youth-led projects for community development, focusing on a gender sensitive approach and use of different media. - increasing the knowledge of best practices on how to develop successful youth-led projects for the community development around Europe and foster the skills of youth organizations and informal groups; - to create a network of organizations that will cooperate in a long term prospective on this topic becoming a resource for the other organizations all over Europe. This international meeting is targeted to 36 youth workers/trainers/leaders/key staff members, 3 from each of the 12 partner organizations, who have the competences to share detailed information about the support to or implementation of youth-led projects for the development of their communities, as he/she has participated in the project with a main role. 11 countries will be involved in order to cover a huge part of European Union programme countries and to share very diversified perspective and work methods. Practices and tools shared by the participants will be gathered in an interactive toolkit which will be used in the second activity (TC) and will be shared through Salto Youth Platform and other on-line channels, so participants will be asked to contribute to the creation of the toolkit.