About the project

Youth PB Accelerator /Erasmus+

The project leader: Foundation Laboratory of Research and Social Action SocLab/Poland

The main aim of the project ‘Youth PB Accelerator’ is to increase the social commitment and empowerment of young people through providing tools and ready-made solutions that will help create more efficient support methods for youth engagement into joint-decisions about issues concerning a given local community. By analyzing the best practices and methodologies of youth education based on municipal participatory tools and school participatory budgeting and the development of common European standards for the inclusion of young people in municipal participatory budgeting over the 2 year length of the project and beyond we will have a practical impact and facilitate youth participation in the democratic processes.

Why the participatory budget? Contrary to the participation in other more formal local or parliamentary elections, the participation in participatory budgets is open to people of much younger age. In this way, young people will be able to learn what opportunities they have to co-decide about spending public funds in their neighbourhood – in the school and municipality. Our project creates an ideal opportunity to experience democracy in action, especially at the local level. We know young people wish to be good citizens, as it has been seen by the recent climate change school strikes happening across Europe. This project will harness that energy and help make it into a lifelong learning opportunity.

To achieve the project’s goal, we will seek to develop the abilities and competences of youth workers in order to ensure the participation of young people in the civic life of the city, community or school. We mainly intend to train teachers and educators how to implement and use participatory budget (PB). Not every youth worker or teacher knows the participatory techniques of engaging young people in public life, or see the possibilities of a participatory budget in this regard. There is currently a lack of structured models and classroom materials for the delivery of participatory budgeting which holds back its growth. Teachers, educators in both formal and informal settings currently lack the skills or resources to deliver on this concept.

As part of the implemented project we will deliver creative and innovative tools and support youth workers, teachers and educators by creating the set of tools:

  • the guidebook/toolkit – showing the model of using the tool such as a participatory budget, developed on the basis of materials and data collected in different countries;
  • the video material promoting the youth involvement into the participatory budget;
  • the interactive map of good practices on how toengage young people in democratic processes in Europe and throughout the world.

The materials will be prepared in the national languages ​​of all partners: in English, Spanish and Polish.

The project also involves the international training course in the project topic to which teachers and educators interested in using the tools of participation in non-formal education will be invited. It will take place in Glasgow in the UK, from 20th to 24 April 2020. 30 people from all countries participating in the project will take part in this training course.

The developed models and tools will be subject to the testing phase, in which 75 young people will take part: 25 people in Białystok, 25 people in Warsaw and 25 people in Belfast (the UK).

The last phase of the project focuses on the dissemination of the project results through organizing 5 seminars at all project partners.

The partnership of the project consists of 5 partners from 3 countries – Poland, Spain and the United Kingdom which are all involved in activities developing civic participation, applying innovative solutions and participative tools, with a particular interest in young people.

Contact to the project coordinator:

Agnieszka Maszkowska

SocLab Foundation

Phone: 00 48 507181919

Email: a.maszkowska@soclab.org.pl