Learning for participatory democracy

Youths only seldomly participate in democratic processes and rarely participate in politics because they do not trust the dominant procedures and processes. This does not mean, however, that youths are apolitical; on the contrary, they seek new ways to express their political views and new ways to influence the existing political circumstances. However, they have little knowledge about democratic methods and processes that are not the mainstream part of everyday life. One cause for this is also the inefficient school system which says little about participation and gives no special motivation to youths.

This is why our project will prepare an educational model about participatory democracy, which will be universally applicable for the Active citizenship subject and transferable to any education institution. Moreover, we will use legislative initiatives with the aim to position our educational model inside the existing legislative framework of the education system. The model will be based on equal integration of participants into decision-making processes.

The education model will also be applied in practice in three Slovenian schools and the activities will be attended by at least 450 pupils.

Finally, we will implement an advocacy campaign first, to gather broad professional support for our model and the proposed legislative reforms and second, we will get support for our model from other NGOs and civil initiatives that work on active citizenship and citizens’ participation.