YouPart had the following - actually achieved - objectives: Enable and strengthen youth participation from the local to the European level; contribute to the quality and innovation of youth work with the Digital Toolkit for Citizenship Education and Civic Participation. In the first part of the project, young people from all 6 partner countries came together not only to discuss youth participation, but also to really bring the words ‘engage’, ‘connect’ and ‘empower’ to life. YouPart was aimed in particular at young people who have little access to political participation, whose voices are less heard in society and politics - but who have a lot to say. The YouPart European Youth Demands developed at two youth conferences in Vienna and Prague were presented to MEPs at the EU Parliament in Brussels. The participants experienced themselves more as active European citizens. Building on this, in the second phase of the project, a great deal of experience, knowledge and feedback flowed into the development of the digital toolkit in order to ensure practical relevance and applicability for youth work. All multiplier events reached the toolkit's target groups, who make a significant contribution to its use and dissemination.
The project development took into account the interests of the partner organisations with regard to cooperation between NGOs with a focus on global learning and youth work organisations, more and less experienced E+ partner organisations from 6 CEE countries: Austria, Czechia, Italy, Slovenia, Greece, Serbia. In particular, the project development responded to the following needs of youth work and young people: 1. provide answers to the challenges identified by the EU Youth Strategy on ‘how to engage more young people from diverse backgrounds, including those with fewer opportunities, and better reach out at grassroots level’; 2. the lack of opportunities for political participation at all levels, partly due to legal restrictions (e.g. no right to vote), often also due to other reasons such as a lack of self-esteem and various disadvantages. Without YouPart youth conferences and EU roundtables (presentation of their demands in Brussels), most of the young people would not have been able to participate; 3. the need and right of young people to be heard and taken seriously when it comes to participation and their political demands.