Youth Participation Session

 

At the beginning of the session, the young people were asked what they understood by “Youth Participation” and what examples they could give related to it. Next, they watched two videos on Active Citizenship to better understand these two concepts.

 

The next activity was “Take a Stand—Agree/Disagree,” in which statements related to the topic of Youth Participation and the space given to young people in both society and school were read aloud, and the participants had to take a stand depending on whether they agreed or disagreed. Examples of statements:

• I feel that young people are heard;

• ​Young people want to participate more, but don’t know how;

• Young people would participate more if they had time and support;

• My opinion matters at school;

• I wish there were more activities created by students;

• There are groups of young people who are excluded from participation;

• The school administration values young people’s voices;

• (...)

• When I think about improving the school, I have lots of ideas!

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The last question from “Take a Stand” was used as a transition to the activity “My School-Investigation.” The goal of this activity was for the students to develop an important skill for becoming active participants: learning to observe, not just to see! With this in mind, in groups of 4 to 6 members, they were tasked with walking around the school and noting various elements:

 

1. Potential: note infrastructure, spaces, and materials that the school already has and that could be used in a different, positive way;

2. Challenges: problems the school faces, things that don’t work as well, and that, ideally, directly affect the group members.

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In the end, each group had to rank the items they collected in order of importance (1 = most important).