GLOBAL YOUTH ADVOCACY
6 COUNTRIES
1000+ ISSUES
1 STRATEGY
Increasing the active participation of the young people in political life, starting from the bottom to get to the top – in one word, advocacy.
THE GOAL
Provide NGOs working in the field of youth the right tools and competences for training and leading youngsters
Make youngsters capable of implementing and carrying out an advocacy campaign
Foster the participation of youngsters in the political life
HOW TO DO SO?
Groups of youngsters coming from Romania, Spain, Italy, Colombia, Ecuador and Dominican Republic met during two youth exchanges, the first one in Spain and the second in Colombia, to start their journey toward the creation of an advocacy campaign.
First we made young people aware of the reality around them; then, we helped them identify a problem; eventually, they built a campaign to raise awareness on the chosen problem and to tackle it, with the help of local stakeholders and policymakers. The aim is thus to get closer and sneak inside the decision-making process, in order to influence it.
THE METODOLOGY
Non-formal education was the way to accomplish all of this. In fact, we noticed a lack of such education learning possibilities across both Europe and Latin America.
Moreover, there were not so many NGOs capable of building and managing an advocacy campaign, an this made even more difficult for young people to get to learn how to make an impact.
THE EUROPEAN DIMENSION
Given the difficult situation that democracy and inclusion in the European Union are facing nowadays, putting the youngsters at the center of the decision-making process seemed the key to spread a grassroot involvement in the political life. The dissemination events will then be of fundamental importance, being chances to deepen EU values such as democracy, active participation, peer relation with NGOs from outside EU, multi-culturality and a learning-centred approach.
The European dimension is thus the benchmark for analyzing the outcomes of the project. The methodology is the same both in European and Latin american countries, but the needs and therefore the issues that arose are different – not only between the two continents, but also between the participating countries from the same area. That is symptomatic of the state of each country; but the common answer through advocacy campaigns, developed all together in an international context, is an indicator of a grassroot engagement that works as well.
THE PARTNERS
