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Advocacy for Youth Action for Participation in Schools
Start date: Feb 1, 2015, End date: Nov 30, 2015 PROJECT  FINISHED 

This project aimed to raise the awareness of the decision makers on the need of defining youth participation in the legal framework at national level. So far, there have been no changes or advancements in the national legislation, especially in the domain of education and local government that would enable legislative regulation of participation in decision-making and institutionalization of forms that young people can use to assure their participation. The overall objective of this project was "to initiate structured involvement of the young students and youth NGO's through civil dialog with relevant duty bearers to enable legal opportunities for participation in the educational processes". The specific objectives of the action were: a) to identify the perception of the young people towards ensuring legal environment for exercising the right to participation in the secondary schools through wide and inclusive process; and b) to strengthen the influence of young people to the key decision makers within the educational process through joint development of policy paper on advocacy for youth participation in the education process. The project included young people from high schools aged 15 – 18 (members of the school organizations including youth with fewer disabilities related to economic and social obstacles). Furthermore, the project involved youth NGO's and representatives of national and local institutions included in the work with the high schools and school organizations. In total 349 participants were engaged in this project, of which 304 in the preparation period and 45 in the main activity. SEGA developed specific methodology for collection of opinions of students and high school staff on the importance and necessity to regulate the right to participation in the secondary schools. SEGA organized 10 local consultation meetings involving young people/students, youth NGOs and local decision makers – high schools and Municipality members. At these meetings, young people discussed the challenges and barriers on youth participation and youth organizing in the schools at local level, the perception for regulating the right to participation in the educational legislation, the support from the schools’ management etc. The main activity occurred in the period of 19-22 November 2015 in Struga. The event included 45 participants, of which 27 participants were young people aged 15 – 29, 12 participants were members of national / local institutions as decision makers and 6 SEGA staff & facilitators. The main event was designed as a wide consultation meeting – workshop which resulted with position paper on exercising the right to participation through legal changes in high schools. The workshop reflected the international experiences and the current Law on Secondary Education in Macedonia. SEGA designed one summary document including all recommendations /comments/conclusions from the local consultation process. This document was main source for work in the workshop. The workshop included Energizers and icebreakers; Work in small groups; Plenary discussions; Evaluations. The participants discussed the draft summarized conclusions and recommendations defined at the local consultation meetings. The final part of the workshop was directed towards definition of the final recommendations and its formulation into a Position paper. After the main event, SEGA shared to Position paper to big number of NGOs and institutions seeking support for submission to the national responsible institutions. Afterwards, SEGA submitted the position paper to the Ministry of education and science and to the Parliament of Republic Macedonia and it is expected the Position paper to be reviewed in the upcoming period. The desired impact within this project refers mostly to the changed perception towards emphasizing on the most important human right, the right to participation of children and youth prescribed with the UN "Convention on the rights of the child" and the "EU acquis and policy documents on the rights of the child". It is expected the participants to be more proactive in advocating for functional school organizations and more structured participation in decision making in the schools. We expect the position paper to influence the policy makers to accept the proposed intervention in the Law on Secondary Education and commence further consultative process to amend the Law. Furthermore, we expect the youth policy makers to increase the frequency of official and systemic consultation with youth NGOs on the youth participation models.
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