The goals of building a small-scale partnership are to create awareness and understanding of the different possibilities of youth participation at the local level, to promote intercultural and intergenerational dialogue, to promote the values of freedom, tolerance and respect for human rights, and to strengthen European identity. The stronger networking of the participating organizations from Latvia, Poland, Romania and Germany aims to make an important contribution to strengthening youth structures and capacity building. Since all four participating partner organizations are located in rather rural areas in small towns up to a maximum of 20,000 inhabitants, the main aim is to strengthen youth participation at the local level. The representation of the very diverse interests of young people is visibly weakening, especially in times of the pandemic. There is an increased retreat into social media spaces as opposed to active engagement at the local level. Mutual exchange between the organizations in the partner countries can also help to identify best-practice examples in order to build sustainable cooperation structures.
Since the outbreak of the Covid 19 pandemic even young people themselve have observed that there is increasing disorientation and inactivity within the scope of youth participation opportunities, be it at the local level, but also in engagement with overarching political, societal and social issues. New momentum for active youth participation is therefore imperative. Time and again, young people complain that engagement is clearly waning and hardly anyone is leaving his/her "comfort zone." The impact of the pandemic has clearly reinforced this. Therefore, concrete aspects and perceived needs in the context of building the envisioned Small-scale Partnership are, on the one hand, to raise awareness of local participation and activities and to advance capacity building of partner organizations and involved young people in rural areas. In addition, there is a need to strengthen networking and harness synergies through the cooperation of different partners on the ground, as well as to strengthen the reconstruction of youth participation opportunities after the Covid 19 pandemic. Cross-national cooperation in particular needs to be strengthened.