Young Brigades aims to strengthen the position of young in their local communities and push their active inclusion in political and social discourse. It helps them establish dialog with different segments of general public, relevant individuals & decission-makers with aim of harmonizing their agendas with local communities and creating concrete propositions of how to implement them on local level, regardless of existing political affiliations and divisions of their communities.

Various Slovenian towns and local communities

Slovenian society has been strongly divided along ideological lines that derive from past and have little connectons to contemporary needs and challenges. These divisions create tensions and hostility that define much of public discourse, pushing other voices and agendas, incl. those of young, to the side. This is especially true in small communities with strong political affiliations to a specific political direction. In order to surpass them, it is important for young from across Slovenia to connect in search of common response to pressing questions of our time; to be able to present their agendas in their local communities, form dialog with different segments of these communities and find ways of implementing their ideas to local politics.

Main group of participants will be composed of up to 30 young (15-22 yrs) from different local communities; throughout the project, participants will cooperate with and/or publicly address relevant individuals from different spheres of public life on local levels and wider with the idea of stimulating public debates that will include young as equal partners; through articles in public media, on-line activities and stage essays, they will address general public, each in their local community, each time inviting them to respond. With help of local organisations and through personal invitations, wide range of community members will be invited to cooperate in debates and in forming final suggestions of how to accept and implement youth agendas on local levels.

- creating group of participants & lecturers/mentors that will work with the group.
- 2x weekly meetings of the group, training them in rethorical skills and working on developing concrete ideas, arguments;
- establishing connections with local media and relevant organizations
- publishing articles by participants and guest writter of their choice; organising public and on-line debates between youth, relevant individuals and general public; creating stage essays that will promote their ideas and stimulate public debates; creating common agenda
- organizing local events through which agenda will be presented, discussed and ‘locally addapted’
- sending final documents to decision-makers and media

Among expected results are better connection between youth and other members of their local communities on social and political matters; higher awareness of youth participation and engagement in public sphere; better inclusion of youth in public and political discourse on local and national level; lists of concrete actions through which proposed agenda could be implemented on local and national level; better and more active dialog between different agents of local communities, including the young, that surpasses traditional divides.

Project will bring together socially committed youth from different local communities that will meet twice weekly in live and on-line activities (workshops, lectures, debates etc); they will work on forming common (generational) agenda which will be presented in each of their communities - first through local and school media and than through live events in each place participants will come from: their peers, local decision-makers and general public will be invited to participate with the idea of discussing the proposed agenda, identifying community response to it, finding concrete possibilities of implementation on local level and forming final document with propositions which will be officially sent to respective major's office & local media.

The idea was born spontaneously through past activities of project leader and other members of core team; it came as logical next step, a necessity, both for the young and the society they demand to be permitted to co-create.

Travel and accommodation (including weekly travel costs for participants from across Slovenia): 6.400
Personnel cost (incl. project management, organisation, administration, PR activities, design): 14.000
Lecturers, guest speakers, guest writers, mentors: 20.000
Video, photo, audio and social network activity: 4.000
Direct civil actions by participants: 5.000
Translations: 3.000
Print: 1.500
Catering: 1.600

We would like to hear from other organisations/groups/individuals that work in the field of active youth participation with main aim to connect young in common political and social action.