The goal is to equip high-schools students with the necessary actionable skills and tools to become active agents of positive change in the local community in their respective 14 small- and medium-sized cities in Romania.
We aim to further develop the framework for an incubator for locally rooted civic youth and high-school student initiatives and individuals.
We will provide them with mentoring, tools and skills to implement local sustainable initiatives for positive and long-lasting change.

Small- & medium-sized cities in Romania, that are not regional university centres.

The Romanian educational ecosystem and societal frameworks do not encourage young people to become active citizens and do not equip them with the necessary actionable skills and tools to understand that they are responsible not only for their own actions (or lack of them), but also for the young community they are a part of and for the local community in their respective cities and suburbs.
As opposed to the big cities and university centres, the small- and medium-sized cities suffer from brain drain and from deficient civic infrastructure. Opportunities for civic engagement tend to be scarce for young people - especially high-school students, since the majority of 18+ years old people tend to move to bigger cities with greater educational, social and career opportunities.

Target group: high-schools students from 14 small- and medium-sized cities.
- 5+ students / city (70+ total) who will benefit from all project’s educational & support activities, on their road to becoming youth workers and active local voices in their schools and communities,
- 30+ locals / city (420+ total) taking part in collaborative community engagement events that will foster freedom of expression and diversity of opinions and ideas exchange, in order to identify local needs and challenges that will become the purpose of 14+ future projects implemented by them local teams,
- 50+ participants / city (700+ total) in local projects.
Other stakeholders involved: high-schools, municipalities, NGOs and, of course, the local communities as indirect beneficiaries of the project’s impact.

Every project phase will be co-created by the local youth teams and all local participants, throughout the school year:
1. Open local calls for high school students who want to be actively involved during the entire project’s period
2. Online & offline intensive training program for the local teams on topics such as project management and community engagement
3. Community engagement events in each city (14 total collaborative workshops and world cafés)
4. Grant-making - gathering of local resources for future projects, while building public-private-civil partnerships
5. Local projects in each city (14 total) based on ideas supported by the community
6. Follow-up phase, dissemination of result and gathering of local teams for project closure and future steps for the next school year.

The project will result in 70+ locally engaged students and 1120+ participants in 14 community engagement events and 14 local implemented projects.
Local young individuals and teams involved will gather enough knowledge and skills through this project and will feel empowered, so that they are both motivated and able to get actively involved in their local communities. We aim for the participants and all local stakeholders involved to become aware of their community's problems, to give them an impetus to actively work on them and solve them. The impact on young people will consist in the transformation of their needs and wishes into actions taken to develop functional civic spaces and to be more active citizens, to become actors of positive change in their own schools and communities.

We aim to provide young people with the tools needed to have a real, positive impact in the communities they are part of, by investing time, resources, energy and passion in implementing local projects based on the needs and wishes of their communities.
The entire project is based on collaborative actions in the local community, by this strengthening social cohesion: community engagement events in the form of world cafés that support diversity of ideas and promote openly expressing different view point; implementation of project ideas that are proposed and backed-up by the local community’s needs and wishes; encouragement and active support for civic engagement among young people and other local actors.

In 11+ years of doing voluntary work and organising projects by and for German-speaking young people on a national and international level, we, as an organisation, have become more aware of the importance of civic education (DE: politische Bildung) in empowering young people in becoming active Romanian and European citizens.
Especially in smaller cities, through the education given by parents and teachers to children and young adults and through awful lot bad examples and lack of leadership icons (both in politics and local communities), we have grown to believe that civic responsibility is a despicable act and not our duty. Therefore, through our idea, we want to continue to promote voluntary work and community involvement for future generations, we want to upscale our initiative.

Educational & organizational support and funding for the local young individuals and teams - 13.020 EUR
Project management costs - community engagement events in each local community - 4.480 EUR
Project management costs - intensive training program for youth workers & local community managers - 6.300 EUR
Service providers (design, printing, web, PR & communications, foto-video) - 6.600 EUR
Personnel costs for the project duration of 11 months - 24.860 EUR

Always looking forward to ideas exchange, to positive & negative feedback and to learning from diverse experiences of other youth and civic organisations, regarding best practices in the field of youth empowerment and civic engagement and also new community engagement methods and tools.