Youth Participate intro

Youth Participate: Introduction

Educating young people in youth participation using digital storytelling

The aim of the You(TH) Participate! initiative was to strengthen the civic engagement of young people from Eastern Slovakia, develop their competencies necessary for active participation, and provide a space for fostering cooperation between young people and so-called important adults; youth representatives at the level of self-governments, schools, and non-governmental organizations. We believe that through its activities, we managed not only to highlight the importance of the topic and attract the attention of local youth, but also to contribute to the creation of a stable community of youth leaders, determined to actively and long-term motivate their peers to participate.

The program of six consecutive, online meetings introduced young people to various opportunities for civic engagement in the local community, contributed to their awareness of their own potential, and to building their sense of initiative.
Using non-formal education activities; brainstorming, group work, creative methods, etc., we created a safe space for sharing opinions, discussing, and proposing solutions, to which we invited 30 active young people aged 16 – 25, representatives of relevant organizations and institutions working with youth, along with relevant representatives of the city's self-government and the self-governing region.
The program of meetings did not aim to impart academic knowledge in the field of political science and sociology to the participants. Our intention was to induce a change in attitude at the participant level. Their realization that the opinion of young people is important and that the authorities representing them are interested. We believe that the implemented activities convinced the young participants that the problems they reflect in their surroundings have solutions and that they themselves can contribute to these solutions. In addition to online meetings, we therefore incorporated practical parts, in which participants could utilize acquired competencies and express their perspective through digital storytelling.