Building Youth Voice: A Toolkit for Developing Participatory Budgeting in Schools and in the Community
This publication has been developed by an international team working within the Youth PB Accelerator project. It provides practical advice, that could be described as a toolkit, for involving young people in participatory budgeting processes. Participatory budgets (PB) have been around for several decades and been used in many different contexts, allowing citizens to have a greater say in decisions about the spending of public funds. Gradually, this democratic innovation has expanded its reach, creating new decision-making opportunities and democratic processes especially relevant and appealing to young people.
The toolkit is based upon an extensive collection of case studies on participatory school and youth budgets in Europe and worldwide and other materials on our project website (https://youthpb.eu/). The materials are developed in three languages — English, Polish and Spanish — based on the background of the partners involved in this project. In many countries around the world you can already find publications on involving young people in participatory processes, though less specifically about participatory budgets. In general there remains a lack of detailed practical guidance, or of good examples from which to draw inspiration. In creating our publication, we relied both on previously available materials and tools, to which we have provided links, as well as created our own original models and tools.