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"Das geht! - Dialog zwischen Jugend und Politik"
Start date: Jan 1, 2015, End date: Dec 31, 2016 PROJECT  FINISHED 

„Das geht! Dialog zwischen Jugend und Politik“ (What’s Up? Youth meets Politics) is a communication process that consists of a variety of events and other communicative formats, which gives young adults access to a continuously updated information platform and the opportunity to participate in (political) decision-making processes in the StädteRegion Aachen. The structured dialogue between young adults and political decision makers contains elements of information, motivation and active participation. “Das geht!” is the result of four years of development of innovative participation structures in the StädteRegion Aachen. Five local towns and municipalities have successfully applied to become showcase towns that support participation of young adults in municipal processes: Alsdorf, Baesweiler, Eschweiler, Herzogenrath and Stolberg. Additionally, models of participation in all municipalities that are part of the StädteRegion Aachen are included in the process. In 2013, almost 1.000 young adults joined in the project “Structured Dialogue”, which offered a wide range of participation possibilities. Communication and participation was enabled by a structure of consisting of regional commodity teams. It is important to notice that young adults in the StädteRegion Aachen actively helped to plan and organise these structures. Members of local and regional student boards as well as young representatives of local municipal boards are members of the project teams. In addition to events for young adults, the process offers many possibilities of participation e.g. in discussion panels, local and regional commodity teams (such as the “Arbeitskreis Jugendpartizipation”) or municipal boards, where members of the regional student board have advisory votes and represent the perspective of young adults in political decision making: In this function they are interfaces between young adults and politicians. An important element of the project is participation of the heads of the municipal administrations: The mayors of the participation cities as well as the Städteregionsrat (head of the administration of StädteRegion Aachen) actively support youth participation and thus honour the young adults’ volunteer work. One important element of motivation is the trip to Brussels for reasons of political education and communication with representatives of political boards of the EU. Motivating the young adults is an important factor to stimulate continuous involvement and offer insight into poltical decision making at EU-level. The structured dialogue will sustain the goals of the EU2020 strategy as well as a profound understanding of democracy and democratic values of the participants, and will clarify the need for active participation of every member of society.
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