“Participation Matters!” is an Erasmus+ project conceived, created and aimed at young people, who will also be the protagonists of all the activities. It responds to their needs to identify the benefits of being part of the EU, to know how its institutions work, to know the tools available to citizens to get in touch with its institutions and to make their voices heard.
The project aims to provide young people with useful information and tools to be protagonists of decision-making processes, becoming a factor for the improvement of European societies. It also aims to improve activities in the field of non-formal education and strengthen relations between partner associations, strengthening their development path that they have undertaken at local, national and international level. The project also aims to meet young people’s needs for youth participation by informing them about the programmes offered by the EU and aimed at them.
The participants, coming from Italy, Greece, Poland, Romania, Bulgaria, Lithuania and Spain, will carry out local activities that will be preparatory and interspersed with 3 international mobility in Greece, Poland and Italy.
Locally, participants will ask their peers what are the most important issues that the EU should address.
During the mobilities, the responses will be combined to identify the priority topic, based on the EU Youth Goals. Then, they will analyse the tools citizens have to submit their requests to the EU. Finally, they will converge towards a European Citizens’ Initiative to be proposed on the basis of the topic identified. Participants will also be able to engage with local policy makers and heads of the offices of EU bodies.
The total participants involved (age: 18-30) will be 28, 4 for each of the 7 organizations involved. Gender balance will be maintained and at least 30% of participants will be young people with fewer opportunities.
We expect that the project will convert participants into local EU “ambassadors”, able to properly inform their peers and give them the right information regarding EU programmes and projects.
The main knowledges that participants will obtain or enhance are:
- EU: history, current policies, functioning of its bodies;
- Advantages of being an EU citizen;
- Tools to get in touch with the EU institutions (online consultations, EU Youth Dialogue, Citizens’ Dialogues, Together.eu, European Citizens’ Initiative);
- Civic sense and active citizenship;
- Mechanisms for youth participation in democratic processes;
- Dialogue with policy makers;
- Soft skills: team working, public speaking, debate, analysis, recap, creativity;
- Organizational skills: events, debates, awareness campaigns, surveys;
- TIC;
- Tolerance and respect for diversity;
- English.
Mobilities schedule:
Athens (Greece) – 03/04/2025 – 05/04/2025
Warsaw (Poland) – 03/07/2025 – 05/07/2025
Treviso (Italy) – 19/11/2025 – 21/11/2025
