Launching Pilot projects in Malta, Slovenia, Georgia and North Macedonia

Digital youth participation is an important vehicle for engaging youth in decision-making processes that affect them. In order to get young people to participate, it is important to use different formats and methodological means. Young people are different – so are the ways to successfully connect with them. Within the project DIGY, the consortium of partners working on the Intellectual output for the creation Best practice materials, in coordination with Coalition SEGA as a lead partner, planned and launched their pilot projects using OPIN in different e-participation process. 

Starting from October 2020, OPIN has been actively used for different e-participation projects in each of the participating countries:

• In Malta, OPIN is used by “Agenzija Zghazagh” to create a National Youth Policy. The young people are involved and participating in different stages of the project, using the e-participation tool OPIN to create a comprehensive Youth Strategy “Towards 2030: Reaching out to, working with and supporting young people” that will last till 2030. “Agenzija Zghazagh” involves young people in the consultation process for drafting youth policy through the use of the e-participation tool OPIN.
• In Georgia, the OPIN platform is being used by “Youth Horizon” to create a local youth council in the municipality Kobuleti, which will take on the role of a loudspeaker to convey the interests of Kobuletian youth to the local municipality council and the city hall. The youth council will be formed through the use of an e-participatory project that will unite 16 young people between 14-29 years old with 5 thematic committees in the following areas: sports, leisure time and healthcare, employment and combating unemployment, youth living in rural areas, human rights and education and youth information services.
• In Slovenia, the partner organization “Heart of Slovenia” is using OPIN to create a local youth strategy for young people in the municipality of Litija. The goal of this project is also to actively engage youth institutions and young people from 15-29 years old from Litija to take part in the creation of a local youth strategy and to establish a strong network on a national level between youth organisations – including the sharing of experiences between experienced organisations and unexperienced ones. Youth institutions that will be included in the project: Association Lojtra, Youth Centre Litija, KLIŠE Student Club, Association D20, Association of Rural Youth Litija, NGO meeting point and High School Litija.
• Starting from February 2021, Coalition of youth organizations SEGA will begin e-participation projects with the overall aim of empowering young people’s voices in the election processes. With this project, SEGA will promote democratic values and encourage youth participation in the upcoming local elections in September 2021 in the Municipality of Prilep, R. N. Macedonia. Moreover, SEGA will lobby the political parties to consider the actual needs of young people in their election programs through conducting a series of focus groups at the local level in order to identify the main specific needs of youth in several areas. The results of the focus groups will be run through OPIN and will be summed-up into a policy brief that will be presented to the political parties and the wider public. SEGA will also raise the issue concerning the influences that the civil society needs to have in the election processes, also through OPIN.

Innovative catalogue for best practice

Within the coordination of pilot projects, the aim is to establish and provide a selection of best practice examples, which will be multilingual and publicly available on OPIN. It will be designed to give first-time project initiators, practitioners and youth workers an overview of different processes of discussion or online-voting, of successful ways to connect online elements with face-to-face workshops, and of effective methods to activate young people. 

This innovative catalogue for Best Practice Examples will be available online in different languages and guarantees accessibility to a wider range of youth organizers in Europe.

Source: SEGA