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Boosting youth participation at the local level 2

2019-2-SE02-KA105-0025072019Youth mobilityfinalized
Countries: SE|PL|PT|ES|IT|MK|LV|TR|UK|FI|EL · Grant: €30,591
Migrants' issuesYouth (Participation, Youth Work, Youth Policy)

Objectives

DYPALL Network (Developing Youth Participation at Local Level) that FOLK TIL FOLK is a member, focuses on the “local dimension” of youth participation based on the belief that youth with its energy has the creativity and potential for change and to be a source of solutions for our society’s challenges, and that these challenges need to be addressed at the local level, starting from the grassroots, where youth work has its strongest impact and where local actors can cooperate and contribute to policy reforms at the local level but also influence national and European policy processes becoming relevant actors in setting the agendas that will affect their lives. As a follow-up to the work done by the partners of DYPALL Network in "Boosting youth participation at local level" Study visits in Portimão (Portugal) and Borlänge (Sweden) in 2017 and 2018, a group of partners expressed interest in further exploring the dimension of youth participation in decision-making processes at the local level, with a specific focus on the participation of young migrants and young people with a migrant background, as well as of youth from rural and geographically isolated areas, and especially to share practices that are already being implemented to adapt them to one’s own reality and reinforce existing programs. FOLK TIL FOLK was involved in the Study visit in Borlänge in June 2018, together with DYPALL Network, Puntland Diaspora Forum, and other partners. Along with inspiring visits to Borlänge municipality and Feyshuset youth center, learning about the interesting inclusion project through sports such as Somalia bandy, and interaction with the local community, the participants shared good practices of participation and integration youth policies from their own countries and local communities and developed ideas for follow-up actions and cooperation within DYPALL Network. This was the second Study visit within this project, after the first one that took place in November 2017 in Portimão (Portugal), which allowed the project partners to visit different realities and compare practices from North and South of Europe. The main objectives were to explore, experience, and understand the specific challenges to youth participation in low-density and geographically remote areas; with a special focus on migrant youth, to visit examples of good practice and based upon interaction with the project organisations and filter out elements to transfer to own reality and offer possibilities for long-term partnership building among organisations active in the field of youth participation at the local level, for future projects. Therefore, we decided to do this follow-up project to allow even more of our partners with whom we cooperate within DYPALL Network to have this experience, this time in different local communities, namely Stockholm in Sweden and Granada in Spain. The first Study visit to Granada, Spain took place from 1st - 6th March 2020 and was followed by a second Study visit that took place from 25th – 30th October 2021, in Stockholm, Sweden. The project " Boosting youth participation at the local level 2” aimed to visit, analyze, experience, and explore practices of youth participation in decision-making processes with a special focus on the inclusion of young migrants and young people with a migrant background and youth in geographically isolated areas. The project consisted of two Study visits and it gave the opportunity for youth workers and municipality officers to come together to develop a more concrete definition of these challenges and to visualize possible solutions starting from practices currently implemented that they had visited in Sweden and Spain, realities very different one from another. The Study visits were hosted in Stockholm (Sweden) and Granada (Spain), offering an authentic experience of Swedish, Spanish, and various migrant cultures through interactions and partnerships with the local community, both of which are very multicultural.

Project partners (12)