MAPPING BEST PRACTICES FOR YOUTH FRIENDLY CITIES
Erasmus+ Strategic Partnership in the field of Youth
2019-3-PL01-KA205-077722
2020-04-01 – 2022-04-30
The partners in Poland, Portugal, Belgium, Romania, Slovenia and North Macedonia are reaching out to municipalities in their regions and countries to examine local youth policies, collecting detailed knowledge, hands-on examples, implementation methods and strategies of those municipalities to support various dimensions of youth friendliness.
PROJECT PUBLICATION
The results of the Project are collected in the Publication. It summarizes the exchange of good practices carried out by the Partners into a set of recommendations for municipalities on youth friendly strategies.
See the Online Publication. It is designed as an online document easily readable on computer screen as well as on mobile phones. It is also possible to download the file into a PDF or print it directly from the browser.
It can be used and modified freely for non-commercial purposes.
The Publication was also printed in a limited number of copies, distributed between the Project Partners, their respective Municipalities and connected organizations working for the youth in their cities.
It’s a handy book in 52 pages with a lot of inspiring examples and ideas.
It is possible to acquire a copy of your own in paper, contact a Project Partner if they are from your country or write an email directly to Nausika (button above), we would arrange to send it by post.
PROJECT RESULTS
1) Publication including best practices on implementing youth friendly cities in various dimensions – based on extensive research on their functioning – recommending ways to achieve them and avoiding obstacles and possible risks.
2) Trained youth workers and municipality representatives – informed about the concept of youth friendly cities and various best practices of their implementation, with contacts, know how and access to support of experts and DYPALL network.
3) Initiated processes of implementation of chosen dimensions of youth friendly city in our municipalities and our partner municipalities.
4) Criteria for an international label of „Youth Friendly City” ready to be taken and used to organize international initiative for municipalities, similar to European Youth Capitals in the future.
1) and 4) are elaborated in the Project Publication. 3) is presented on the recordings from the 2022-03-09 Conference in Cracow. 2) was carried out during an expanded Training in Rabka-Zdrój, Poland, July 2021.
THE PARTNER CONSORTIUM
Here are the names of our organizations and the links to our webpages and social media. We are all happy to talk about youth-friendly practices and policies in various countries – just find the contacts in the links:
Educational Foundation Nausika was established to focus cooperation of the professional educators on developing high-quality learning agenda in non-formal education, as well as facilitate cooperation between NGOs, activists and public institutions in Kraków.
DYPALL Network is a European platform of municipalities and civil society organizations working together to improve youth participation in decision making processes at local level. The network aims at enabling municipalities and regional authorities to address the needs and interests of youth, while contributing to engage young people as active actors of the solutions for their problems, increasing their level of ownership, commitment and engagement in our communities.
The PONT Group is a Cluj, Transylvania-based expert group working on local and social innovation, creator of Cluj-Napoca 2015 European Youth Capital. Our non-profit organization is devoted to initiate, implement and promote projects with the aim of contributing to the economic and social development of Romania and its regions.
Institute for Youth Policy is a non-profit private institution focused on the youth field in relation to social events with the aim of developing a friendlier environment for young people to live in and develop.
ARS for Progress of People is a non-profit organization based in Brussels. ARS4Progress works for the promotion of economic, social and cultural development in all its facets, with special attention to issues related to education, youth policy and civil society.
Center for Intercultural Dialogue (CID) is a non-governmental, non-profit youth-led organization that works on national level in North Macedonia. Our mission is to ensure sustainable community development by creating opportunities for quality engagement of civil society, advancing learning opportunities, and active involvement of young people and other citizens.
CONFERENCE IN CRACOW
On 9th of March 2022 the leaders of out organization met in-person in Kraków, Poland, discuss and deepen the projects results gathered in the Publication.
We were proud to welcome representatives of Kraków Municipality, who learn about the youth policies and strategies of a few other European cities.
It was an enriching summary of the exchange of good practices carried out within the project and a promising opening of future collaborations between our institutions and municipalities.
The whole Conference was recorded and shared online, you can watch them here separately or go to the Playlist.
Read the whole Program of the Conference, with titles, names and contacts to out Speakers.
PROJECT RESULTS
Opening the conference
Presentation of the conference`s context – the strategic partnership project “Mapping best practices for youth friendly cities” and the concept of youth friendly cities. Challenges for youth friendly cities of the future.
Youth policy in Kraków
Mateusz Płoskonka, Director of the Social Policy and Health Department, Kraków Municipality
The presentation of the Young Krakow 2.0. programme and its main activities: youth centers, youth initiatives, participation programs, volunteering, school participatory budget, promoting youth culture and civic activism.
Models for Youth Policy Design at Municipality Level
Bruno Antonio, President of the DYPALL Network, Portugal
The presentation of the DYPALL Network`s recent work with municipalities in Portugal, focusing on how participatory, cross-sectorial approach to youth policy design is supporting the development of youth friendly cities. The experience shared will be based on the processes of designing regional youth policy of Madeira Region and local youth policies Guimaraes Municipality and Municipality of Sintra.
Youth Friendly Municipality – an integrative approach for quality of life in the society
Vanja Debevec, CEO of the Institute for youth policy, Ajdovščina, Slovenia
The presentation of the first certification of local communities in Slovenia, which by implementation of public policies, are establishing and maintaining a youth-friendly environment where young citizens have the possibility of achieving full autonomy and active participation in all spheres of public life.
Cluj for Youth 2030
Andras Farkas, Strategic Director of PONT Group, Romania
The presentation outlines the way the city of Cluj-Napoca, Romania addresses a 10-year metropolitan development based on a coherent youth strategy supported by a range of systemic interventions, key initiatives and the aligned work of over 700 local stakeholders.
The role of MultiKКулти Youth Center in Kumanovo
Nami Isaki, President of Center for Intercultural Dialogue, North Macedonia
The presentation of the MultiKulti, the youth center managed by CID with the support of the municipality Kumanovo, as a good practice in the field of youth spaces and spaces for participation.
GeoCitizen Atri, a good practice to improve structured dialogue with policymakers
Giulia Scarafoni, ARS for Progress, Belgium/ Italy
The presentation of the project “GeoCitizen Atri” – a crossectorial initiative to encourage conscious participation of young citizens in the decision-making processes. To achieve this goal, the Municipality of Atri tested the use of an innovative e-tool, the GeoCitizen platform that allowed to collect proposals from young students of the Municipality of Atri about potential interventions in the city.
European framework for youth friendly cities
Barbara Moś, Associate of Nausika Educational Foundation, Director of Europe4Youth Association
The presentation of the final results of the project “Mapping best practices for youth friendly cities” – a set of dimensions of youth friendly cities with a proposal of standards to be proposed to municipalities to give a framework for strategic developments in the field of youth.
Moderated debate with speakers and guests on how to make municipalities more youth friendly?
The discussion on chosen dimensions for youth friendly cities developed by the partners consortium:
- Youth Participation
- Health and Wellbeing
- Support in achieving economic independence
- Infrastructure
- Conditions for learning and development
EXTERNAL MATERIALS
During multiple project meetings we have gathered various high quality materials published by other authors in this topic.
They all vary in the applied methodology and categorization, the selection of dimensions, criteria, standards and indicators is approached differently by each authors, although all publications are published by professionals in this field.
This gives us an impression how big the topics of YOUTH FRIENDLY and YOUTH WORK are.
Instead of narrowing down the scope, we would prefer to share collected materials in full diversity. Feel free to explore the documents, if you like to use them, please pay attention to copyrights and acknowledge the authors.
A common framework for the further development of youth work
Report from the Expert Group on Youth Work Quality Systems in the EU Member States
Published by the EUROPEAN COMMISSION
This is an extensive source of professional knowledge in the field of youth work, the most important definitions in the „Mapping Project Publication” were taken from here.
A short introduction to the principles of Youth Work
Published by Europe Goes Local
Published by DYPALL Network in 2019
TEN YEARS OF BOOSTING VIBRANT YOUTHFUL CITIES
Published by European Youth Forum in 2018
100QUALITY LABEL FOR YOUTH FRIENDLY CITIES
% Youth City is a Project supported by Erasmus+ Programme
Manual on the Revised European Charter on the Participation of Young People in Local and Regional Life
Council of Europe Publishing
„A compendium of knowledge on the needs of adolescents and youth in the Cluj Metropolitan Area”
Published by the LEAP Team
This is not from Europe, but presents an interesting collection of dimensions and indicators to asses the youth-friendly aspects of a city.
Published by YouthfulCities
FOLLOW UP
The Consortium has gathered good practices from various European Municipalities and facilitated discussion between their stakeholders about the upcoming needs and challenges in the context of Youth.
We see this Project as an opening rather than a conclusion. The Partners have agreed on the need to facilitate a bigger-scale research and collaboration, including more actors and experts from a wider scope of European cities and countries.
The Project therefore concludes as a need analysis and a token of will for the following tasks to be followed by future projects on the European level:
- Unification and expansion of Quality Labels as tools of recognition of the European Municipalities as youth-friendly entities.
- Introduction of long-term Youth Policy documents and strategies in more European Municipalities.
- Empowerment of collaboration between public and non-governmental institutions which aim at systematic development of Cities towards youth-friendly solutions.