You may have a vague idea of an eParticipation project you would like to run, e.g. there is a question that urgently needs to be discussed with the youth. Or you feel like inclusion of the youth has come up too short so far and you would like to change this and ask yourself how you can make it happen: this is what we call the „idea phase“. This early phase of a participatory project – no matter whether it is a digital or an analogue project – is often mistakenly underestimated and under-prioritised. If you have a clear picture of the purpose of the project, and the impact you want to achieve, the likelihood of successfully reaching the goals of the project is increased.
You should ask yourself the following question: What do you want the project to achieve? In sum, this has to do with impact. The more clearly and realistically you can define these goals, the easier it will be for you to successfully outline the needed steps of the project to reach the desired result. As you are dealing with eParticipation and OPIN in particular – make sure, that your goals can be achieved with the functionalities of OPIN.
You can always create a test-account and play a bit with the possibilities that are offered by OPIN. Also, we urgently advise you to browse through the manual and the guidelines.
The „e“ in eParticipation refers mainly to the participatory method you carry out. For successfully running the project actually pure project management skills are needed – same as when running analogue participatory projects: You should have a clear idea about the purpose of your project, the impact you want to achieve with it and the budget available. This means that you are now ready to make a rough sketch of the process from A to Z that should of course fit into the decision-making process.
Making a short project description of 2-3 pages is a good starting point. In this description, you could include:
All texts and resources on this website have been funded by the European Commission as part of the Erasmus+ project DIGY and are published under the following licence: