Youth Participate

Youth Participate: Intro

Educating young people in youth participation using digital storytelling

Recent surveys on youth participation in Slovakia (RMS, IUVENTA, EUROBAROMETER) show young people's shaken trust in the country's political institutions and their political representatives. On average, 80% of young people aged 15-24 do not trust the government and parliament, and their attitudes towards self-governing bodies at regional, municipal, and city levels show a similar trend. Young Slovaks are convinced that "politicians" are not interested in them and their opinions, and that youth do not have a real opportunity to engage in public decision-making and influence events in their surroundings.

The engagement of young people at the municipal or community level in our country significantly lags behind Western EU states. Participation in student school councils, youth parliaments, or youth organizations activating youth to address public affairs is not considered attractive among young people; on the contrary, apathy, distrust in representative democracy, and a leaning towards extremist political entities are increasing.

The You(TH) Participate! initiative responds to this unfavorable situation with the aim of strengthening civic engagement of young people from Eastern Slovakia, developing their competencies necessary for active participation, and providing 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 will not only draw attention to the importance of the topic and attract the interest of local youth, but also contribute to the creation of a stable community of youth leaders, determined to actively and long-term motivate their peers to participate.

Schedule:

The program of six consecutive, online meetings will introduce young people to various opportunities for civic engagement in the local community, explain how they can participate in public decision-making, and contribute to their awareness of their own potential and the building of their sense of initiative.
Using non-formal education activities such as brainstorming, group work, creative methods, etc., we will create a safe space for sharing opinions, discussing, and proposing solutions, to which we invite 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 meeting program does not aim to impart academic knowledge in political science and sociology to participants. Our intention is to induce a change in attitude among participants. Their realization that the opinion of young people is important and interests the authorities who represent them. We believe that the implemented activities will convince 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 have therefore incorporated practical parts, in which participants will be able to utilize acquired competencies and express their perspective through digital storytelling.

At the first meeting, we will focus on an introduction to the topic – participation, we will go through basic definitions of concepts and an overview of resources. Together we will look at how young people perceive participation and what forms they have already encountered. We will discuss with participants what personally motivates them to active participation and how to strengthen this in their peers.
In the introductory part of the second meeting, we will explore the individual levels of participation. Together we will climb the so-called ladder of participation (R.Hart). We will discuss the importance of civic engagement and the significance of youth involvement in public decisions. In the second part of the meeting, we will introduce digital storytelling. We will talk about what content captures our attention on social networks and what are the characteristics of a captivating message.

This will be followed by a short homework assignment for individual and especially creative work.

During the third meeting, we will focus on the needs of young people and obstacles to their participation. We will discuss the needs of their peers and offer strategies on how they can be met. Together with the participants, we will identify the problems in their city that young people perceive as most serious.

This will be followed by a short homework assignment for individual and especially creative work. Using digital storytelling, we will try to capture the identified problems and draw the attention of our surroundings to them.

For the fourth time, we will meet to present the digital "stories" created so far and provide feedback on them. Subsequently, we will begin to search for solutions to the identified problems. We will ask ourselves what we will need for the solutions and what help we would need from authorities – the so-called important adults.

The fifth meeting will be dedicated to the so-called structured dialogue, a discussion between young participants and representatives of self-government, schools, and non-governmental organizations. In the introduction, we will focus on our personal attitudes towards youth participation. Subsequently, we will jointly review the solutions to problems identified by our participants that have been proposed so far. We will transform the proposed solutions into plans of concrete steps and activities, identify necessary resources, form joint teams, and redistribute responsibilities.

This will be followed by a short homework assignment for individual and especially creative work. The task of the participants will be to present the planned solutions in the form of digital storytelling and thus attract the attention of their peers.

The final meeting will be dedicated to presentations of the solutions formulated so far, their individual steps and activities. We will jointly discuss their strengths and weaknesses and how to present them most effectively to young people from the surrounding area. The second part of the meeting will be dedicated to evaluating the course of the education.

The results of the initiative and the experiences gained during its duration will be disseminated by participants through activities planned during the education and through digital storytelling. We anticipate that the results of Youth Participate will reach approximately 600 young people from the Košice region, representatives of youth organizations, schools, after-school facilities, and self-governments.