The Citizen Y Resource Centre’s initiator is PONT Group, an organisation from Transylvania involved in social innovation through participation, entrepreneurship and culture with a special focus on youth and the use of information technology. PONT Group is based in Cluj-Napoca, the region of Transylvania, Romania.

Short history

(2012- 2015) Cluj-Napoca, European Youth Capital of 2015

PONT Group proposed the idea and coordinated the application of Cluj-Napoca for the European Youth Capital title of 2015. The bid proved to be successful and unleashed an untapped force coming from young people in the service of the city’s economic and social development. This first step enabled a set of follow-up efforts resulting a continuously enlarging set of projects and programmes leading to the creation of the Citizen Y Resource Centre.

(2015-2019) Com’ON Cluj-Napoca, Com’On Europe and Com’ON Romania

Com’ON Cluj-Napoca was the first participatory budgeting process for young people in Central and Eastern Europe and it was PONT Group’s main contribution to the Cluj-Napoca 2015 programme. It was repeated in 2016. From 2017, a Romanian and European extension process was launched. Com’On Romania developed new forms of consultation with young people while Com’ON Europe was set to deliver a strategic framework and tools for delivering participatory budgeting processes for youth

(2015-2019) Youth Capitals

One of the legacy programmes of Cluj-Napoca 2015, the Romanian Youth Capital title created an important tool to empower Romanian cities in investing in youth and co-creating urban development processes. The programme hosted already 3 editions (Timișoara, Bacău and Baia-Mare) while Iași is the current title holder. Additionally, the National Youth Capitals in Eastern Europe project enabled a cooperation between key stakeholders of Bulgaria, Moldova, Romania, Serbia and Ukraine and created a policy document called 11 Questions on National and Regional Youth Capitals in Europe and the World.