finished
by Open Summit
How to make citizen participation more attractive to youth? What can youth participation learn from citizen participation?
Participants of the Open summit on youth eParticipation in Europe “Future is Now” are invited to brainstorm and share their ideas. You have the chance to give your input even if you cannot participate in all of the discussion groups. Your ideas will be reviewed and discussed in the group. They are the basis for our 12 statements that will be presented by the end of the day.
The discussion group SYNERGIES will take place on thursday at 16:00 - 17:45 in room Plenarsaal.
12/07/2017 5:45 p.m.
Recommendation of the synergies group:
Individual arguments from the discussion:
- citizen participation gets better funded than youth participation
- the process counts! a good structured citizen participation project also works for youth
- age is very important (youth not grown or mature enough to know how they can influence the future)
- difference between these two groups is how to approach them
- youth group is in movement : but problem is that youth participation is only fostered for an age 18+ (should start earlier)
- transparency is much more importeant than constumization - we should be transparent in general instead of gamificate youth participation
- particapatory frustration also depends on economical and thus social crisis / problems
Group 1
- good participation processes should be available for everyone, but we shouldn't lose the youth work aspect. Young people can be discriminated in the society - there is a clear reason why we target young people
- problem to establish to what extent do young people actually take part in the political process (example of Barcelona, where youth activism is widespread)
- no big difference between less developed countries (ex. Balkans) and more highly developed in terms of youth participation
- break the culture of power starting from the school system - promote participatory culture from a very young age, starting from the education system: need to change mindset, to empower people to know they can make a difference
- make adults create the conditions to put the central focus on the young people
- transparency: change takes many years, if we fail we need to explain why
- role of parents: most children are unfamiliar with the topic of participation
- it makes no sense to create more and more tools for participation unless we enact a cultural change
Group 3
learnt that participation is not so easy - should have available good examples because often first time users
IMPACT need to have political will to change things, build trust that what they are doing leads to something, this trust is very important for future participation
more important impact than goodies - have to see themselves in that reality
Civic and young- the same in that they need to be real participatory processes but different topics and target strategy
Youth
dont know about it (some projects are successful with older adults but not with youth-why?)
not informed enough
don’t dare, a new world to navigate but the will is there, sometimes it’s not possible for them
time- many civic participation have old people because they have time- involving young people at a later stage but not how it should be
time frame and result, tangible
gameification- gets them interested. But not all sectors have these skills, need interdisciplinary action
country situations different
Draft recommendation
special effort on communication, ensure there is always an IMPACT that they can see and a concrete timeline
Group 2:
- the participation digital platform should bring all age groups together
The recommendations that were proposed by the Synergies group are:
