Digital youth participation empowers young people to become active citizens from the local to European level. However, the positive effects only unfold when the participation process is run professionally – just to use digital tools is not enough to inspire young, administrations and youth organizations to collaborate. Unfortunately, potential initiators often lack the experience, personnel and financial resources needed to plan and conduct a successful e-participation project. This is a reason why first-time pilot projects may fail due to the many unknown challenges and pitfalls, leading to frustration among participants.
The Erasmus+ Strategic Partnership project “DIGY – Digital youth participation made easy” tackles this problem by delivering qualification and capacity building for initiators of digital youth participation projects. The e-learning materials designed will be integrated into the OPIN platform, a professional online toolbox for digital youth participation that is already available in 10 European languages. OPIN itself will be improved in its software components. Thus, the European-wide infrastructure for digital youth participation is strengthened and enriched by modules which increase the know-how on how to run a successful digital youth participation project on OPIN.
