What do young people need to learn to participate? There are two answers to this question. Nothing and almost anything. Participation is a right. Young people do not have to be trained or educated in a particular way to have this right, they have it automatically as part of their human rights. However, developing relevant skills and competencies can help young people have a greater understanding of how our democracies work, stronger political voices, and ultimately make their participation initiatives more successful.
The organization of the CB workshops is to ‘ensure that young people have access to citizenship education to provide them with solid knowledge on political systems, democracy and human rights, attained also through community-based experiences in order to promote active civil participation’. The workshops will use set of materials to equip young people with all the competences that are needed to take action to defend and promote human rights, democracy and the rule of law, to participate effectively in a culture of democracy, and to live peacefully together with others in culturally diverse societies.
Partners will engage local youth councils and youth parliaments in each country to dedicated capacity building and leadership skills (4 partners x 2 CB workshops x 25 youth).
In the case of Albania, a national strategy on youth and locally established youth councils are set up in each municipalities. The newly selected members have expressed their needs on how effectively incorportate young’ people into city decision making;
In Bosnia and Herzegovina, UZD is a very reputable organization that is currently operating in premises that are made available by local authorities, giving more power and impact to the work on prevention violence and gender based violence among women and youth.
In Kosovo, PEN remains as a driving force for youth engagement. By providing training on leadership, participation and representation PEN will be able to have agents of change among youth as future leaders.
These workshops will be based on “experimental methods”, or randomly known as “learning by doing” method, which will facilitate the diving into local governmental “life” through addressing themes and topics of great relevance.
Each of the partners, will be able to identify and further explore topics of common concerns which can bring some good examples to be raised at regional levels.
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