Žinau, ką renku
Start date: Aug 1, 2014,
End date: Jan 31, 2016
PROJECT
FINISHED
In Lithuania, like in other European countries, the participation of citizens, and especially that of the youth, in public life both at national ant international levels is drastically decreasing. The gap between the politicians and people is apparently demonstrated by the low turnout in local, national, and especially European Parliament, elections. The youth shows little interest in international and national politics, its engagement in state and local decision making is unsatisfactory.
A group of young people, having acquired the necessary knowledge and competences at the Model European Parliament simulations in Lithuania, decided take up public actions seeking to encourage young people's civic participation. To this end, by the end of last year they we undertook an initiative to set up the election watchdogging platform, that would provide a friendly environment for citizens to communicate with politicians as well as strengthen the accountability of the latter for their decisions and actions. In April 2014 the virtual platform www.zinaukarenku.lt was launched to monitor the EP and Presidential elections.
The main objectives of the project are: to increase the participation of Lithuanian citizens, and especially that of the youth, in elections, their responsable choice and consistent participation in public policy by strengthening their knowledge and critical thinking as well as by offering alternative and more attractive forms of participation.
The project will directly contribute to the implementation of the objectives and principles of the Structured Dialogue by enabling young people to start up a dialogue with politicians and to discuss publicly topical issues of the youth policy.
The initiative group of volunteers is open to all Lithuanian youth. Thus it is intended to expand it via the activities of MEPand the member organisations and youth round tables of the partner. The project participants are 16 to 30 years olds, i.e. persons that use IT most frequently.
Main activities are as follows:
1. Workshop on increasing youth awareness and participation re EP work and local elections - 20 persons.
2. Workshops to monitor the results of Lithuanian MEPs' work – 2 events 20 persons each.
3. Meetings with Lithuanian MEPs – 6 events 20 participants each.
4. Seminars on local elections – 3 seminars 20 participants each.
5. Meetings with local politicians – 6 events 20 participants each.
6. Development of the virtual monitoring platform of public policy .
Diverse interactive project activities - seminars, meetings, virtual work, - where young people will participate from the very beginning will strengthen their political literacy and awareness, foster their civic engagement and social responsibility, develop their capacities to seek common goal and work in teams, enable them to voice their opinions publicly.
Also participants will acquire professional competences such as planning, drafting of documents, organising of events, information dissemination and public communication. The youth will set up relationships with public authorities, media and NGO representatives. Work with different field experts will facilitate the development of independent political attitudes by the youth. The competences acquired by participants will be acknowledged by issuing Youthpass.