Those who are putting forward projects should be able to plan out and describe the project, ideally including all the elements required for its implementation. Some of these items that should be considered are: defining the need or problem to be solved, the proposal, the recipients or those that will benefit, the people responsible for the project, the spaces or places where the activities will take place, the nature of the activities, a timeline for implementation (including any milestones, deadlines etc.) and, of course, the budget. You can download an example of a simple project proposal form here.

Empathy maps are a way of visualising a person’s attitudes and behaviours. You can create one by creating it in person or designing it virtually. Either way, the results are similar and useful when gathering information about Youth PB participants. You can download a template to develop an empathy map here.

Each workshop can take different forms and you should think about the questions that are most important to your process. For inspiration, you can download a scenario for developing a creative workshop here.

Tools and approaches that can be used as learning activities include in-school and out-of- school lessons and workshops, teacher meetings or other educational events. Here you can download an example of scenario to support discussion and learning about school or municipal PB.

Much like when building a successful school building, home or community facility, whilst an overall vision matters, there is an order in which to do things, such as placing the project on firm foundations, and then choosing the remaining elements; the building blocks, and the processes that will sit upon those foundations.

Here you can download the infographic describing each element of the house metaphor.

Debate the Values! Youth PB Edition is an educational game about two elements of Participatory Budgeting: values and good practices. Values establish the culture, or the firm foundations, upon which every PB project should be grounded. Good practices are examples of using the values in practice in a variety of Participatory Budgeting projects in Europe and the United States of America.

It is important to allocate time to considering the values which will underpin the process. To facilitate the discussion on values, we have prepared a card game that can be used during the co-design team meeting and with students. The printable game and instructions can be downloaded here.

Values establish the culture, or the foundations, upon which you should place your work. In our project we agreed upon nine key values that may be important within your PB process. Not every value will be considered of equal importance in different contexts. You should decide which are the most important to you by discussing them with those you are working with on your own PB project.

You can download the infographic showing values we describe in the toolkit.

In developing the principles of your process, it is useful to consider some basic questions, such as why, for whom, and how? Sometimes offering a little inspiration and guidance can be useful. You can download an example of the rules for a school participatory budget used in Poland.

In a number of activities we found interesting scenarios for the first meeting of the co-design team to develop the rules for the school participatory budget. You can download a sample scenario of a meeting where these rules are developed.