The Youth Participation Toolkit is a resource to accompany and complement the Youth Participation Strategy and addressed to everyone in the Youth Work community of practice who wishes to enable and foster youth participation through the EU youth programmes.
The Youth Participation Toolkit contains 12 modules, each of them usable as a freestanding resource, which combine to form a toolkit for specific types of actions or projects of the EU youth programmes. The content of each module serves to enhance participation using the opportunities provided by Erasmus+ and the European Solidarity Corps. At the same time, all modules are informed by three issues of importance for youth participation today: Inclusion and Diversity, Digital Transformations and Sustainability.
The toolkit provides practical ideas and guidance to foster youth participation and take on board the ideas, concepts, and good practices for participation that the Youth Participation Strategy presents. With the toolkit, you will find a more comprehensive understanding of youth participation theory and concepts, improve the quality of thought and practice on youth participation and build experience using the Erasmus+ and European Solidarity Corps programmes to support young people’s participation.
The information outlined in the Youth Participation Toolkit will support you in considering young people and their participation needs and wishes, guided by the values promoted by the European institutions, through the EU Youth Strategy and the European Youth Goals, in general, and through the Youth Participation Strategy, specifically.
Who is this toolkit for?
This toolkit is for all those that enable and foster youth participation and are interested in doing so through the EU youth programmes!
You might be the leader of a youth group, a youth worker in a youth centre, on the board of a youth organisation, a peer educator, the representative of other young people, a trainer or simply someone working to get other young people involved in an active way in their communities.
This toolkit is for those interested in:
- developing an understanding of youth participation theory and concepts and/or
- improving the quality of the thinking and practice on youth participation and/or
- building experience in implementing youth participation and/or
- using Erasmus+ and European Solidarity Corps programmes to support young people’s participation and/or
- accessing resources and additional information about youth participation in the context of the EU youth programmes.
What is in this toolkit?
This toolkit comprises 12 modules with this introduction.
- Module 01: Introduction
- Module 2: What is youth participation? This module provides an introduction to the main concepts of participation that have been developed as part of the SALTO PI Participation Strategy.
- Module 3: Promoting participation for all. This module develops ideas about how participation can be accessible, inclusive and sensitive to the diversity of young people.
- Module 4: Learning by doing. This module discusses learning by doing as a basis for young people to develop participation competence.
- Module 5: Young people leading projects. This module develops ideas about how young people can lead within projects, thereby gaining meaningful participation experiences.
- Module 6: Creating change with projects. This module reflects on change. How do participation projects contribute to positive change in society? How can change projects improve the participation experience of young people?
- Module 7: Mobility projects for young people. This module looks specifically at how to implement a participation dimension in Key Action 1 mobility projects, namely youth exchanges.
- Module 8: Youth participation activities. This module outlines what it takes to make a Key Action 1 participation project meaningful for participating young people.
- Module 9: Discover EU. This module reflects on how to enhance the Discover EU programme and the opportunities it offers young people to travel and experience Europe with participation experiences.
- Module 10: Solidarity Projects. This module considers the link between participation and solidarity and how to integrate a participation dimension into Solidarity Projects.
- Module 11: Volunteering. This module presents ideas about how to develop a participation dimension in European Solidarity Corps volunteering activities.
- Module 12: Planning for participation. This module suggests some practical tools for planning the integration of participation into projects.
What can you use this toolkit for?
- This toolkit will provide you with information, tools and access to further reference material about participation concepts, the EU youth programmes and the opportunities they offer you for enabling and fostering youth participation.
- You will also find guidance that can help you to think about youth participation and your practice critically, and to improve its relevance and effectiveness – in other words, its quality.
- You can use the ideas and tools in this toolkit to develop your own experience of implementing youth participation in specific activities and projects with young people, and to evaluate these activities and projects.
- And, you can gain access to resources that can help you to utilise the Erasmus+ and the European Solidarity Corps to support the participation of young people, whether by applying to do a project or by gaining access to new partners and networks.
You can download this toolkit for free here.
