The GOAL of COM’ON Europe is to create an open source framework for European cities in implementing participatory budgeting processes, which target young people not just as creators and initiators but also as decision makers themselves. It also aims to create a platform for cooperation between cities which applied or are willing to apply similar processes in the near future. The project aimed to reach these goals until June 2019.

The GENERAL OBJECTIVE of COM’ON Europe is to contribute to the improvement of civic participation of young people in local life through local level participatory budgeting mechanisms. The project will contribute to the increase of young people’s spirit of creativity, associativity, entrepreneurship, and community development by providing a safe environment for planning and coming forward as informal groups with small-scale initiatives, while providing funding on behalf of the municipalities or other donors and sources of funding, and delegating decisions towards the local community about initiatives which should to be supported through this process.

Specific objectives are:

O1: to create a clear general policy framework in order to increase civic participation of young people through dedicated participatory budgeting processes for youth in urban communities based on theory and practice which connects European policies with local level practical implementation, while also bringing up local experience to the European playfield (LOCAL-EUROPEAN),

O2: to provide participatory urban environments for young people and for public authorities based on trust, assistance and easy access and with the active contribution of the civil society (DECISION, VOTE), and to reach out to young people and to enable their creativity in the service of the urban quality of life of cities (IDEA, INITIATIVE),

O3: to enable other cities in adopting similar participatory processes and consolidating the cooperation of European cities (and especially cities involved in the Network of European Youth Capitals) regarding youth participation through the creation of the European Platform of Participatory Budgeting for Youth (consisting first of the European Centre for Youth Participation, the European Youth Participatory Registry and an open source methodology and toolkit (NETWORK, FRAMEWORK).

COM’ON Europe connects two specific aspects: youth participation and participatory budgeting, and this way it becomes original, unique. The reason for this is that it keeps the principle of participatory budgeting (deciding on public money’s faith) but it provides a double-sided platform through the engagement with organised and also unorganised young people willing to organise themselves but not through legally established organisations. This enables untapped energies of young people brought to surface in shaping community life in cities.

All partners are representing European Youth Capital title-bearer cities like Torino 2010, Braga 2012, Maribor 2013, Thessaloniki 2014, Cluj-Napoca 2015, Varna 2017 and Cascais 2018. These are all currently active cities in the Network of European Youth Capitals, all of them coming from member states of the European Union.

The Com’ON Romania program aimed to identify the needs and desires young people and to encourage their civic engagement, especially through dedicated participatory budgeting mechanisms for young people in cities of Romania. The first edition of the program was launched in 2015 by Com’On Cluj-Napoca, then Com’On Timișoara followed. Finally, we created the Com’ON Romania and Com’On Europe programs.

Main sponsor: The European Union through Erasmus+ program
Project coordinator: PONT Group
National Partners: Romanian Youth Council and Banca Comercială Română

WHAT IF WE BUILT OUR URBAN COMMUNITIES AROUND YOUNG PEOPLE? As the Network of European Youth Capitals, our vision is one Europe with cities committed to youth and actively involving youth related-policies in local and regional development, participatory processes and decision making.

Our vision considers youth participation, equal opportunities for youth and sustainability of youth structures as driving forces of medium and long term urban development, with a key contribution to the quality of life of all inhabitants.

We constantly seek to create new ways on engaging young people in urban development processes while enhancing their European identity, through projects promoting multicultural, open and inclusive approaches, and an entrepreneurial attitude. The work of partner cities might seem to be oriented only towards youth, but we consider that our approach is horizontal. Through this broad partnership of European Youth Capital cities, we also create a context of diversity which highlights the very essence of Europe: a community based on diversity, equality and freedom.

Urban Citizen Y proposes a professional process through which current challenges of cities regarding their young people are identified, underlying problems analysed, solutions proposed and tested, and final outcomes synthetized and disseminated towards stakeholders. (Design Thinking process)

Urban Citizen Y addresses five key issues regarding urban youth ecosystems: youth information systems (with Maribor’s professional leadership), civil and political participation (with Novi Sad’s leadership), youth-friendly spaces (with Braga’s leadership, employment and entrepreneurship opportunities (with Varna’s leadership) and long-term vision and impact (with Thessaloniki’s leadership). City-leaderships were identified based on existing good practice and expertise on the specific field. Additionally, Cluj will take a general coordinator’s role while Amiens through its municipality will have a key role in dissemination towards institutional stakeholders.

We build on Design Thinking, a method for the practical, creative resolution of problems using the strategies designers use during the process of designing. Design thinking has also been developed as an approach to resolve issues outside of professional design practice, such as in business and social contexts.

Urban Citizen Y goes through the following process:

1. Challenges are raised by youth experts, decision makers and practitioners from partner cities and European institutions within the opening event. Each city will be represented by at least 7 people, including youth leaders, decision makers and youth support organisations. Each topic is analysed in a 90-minute panel resulting in a position paper created by each panel’s lead panelist.

2. For each topic, a specific workshop is organised with 5 participants coming from each partner city (2 young people and 3 youth workers). Topic-leader cities provide hosting and additional local participants for each workshop. During the workshop, participants go through a Design Thinking process with the help of experts of the Lead Partner. Each workshop will provide small working group settings where participants will go through the basic steps of defining the problem, researching, forming ideas, prototyping and testing. Each workshop will come up with 7-10 practical solutions to challenges cities face on the specific topic addressed during the workshop.

3.  All the 35-50 solutions will be compiled into the Guidelines for Better Urban Youth Ecosystems which will be presented and debated during the closing event, the Citizen Y Conference in Cluj-Napoca, following a similar format to the one of the opening event.

Before the opening and closing event, an online survey regarding young people’s perception of their city will be conducted in all 7 cities involving a total number of 10,500 people for each survey. Also, workshop-hosting cities will conduct a specific online survey on their topic involving 1500 young people. 

As a complementary aspect, all participating cities will create an action plan which will be disseminated together with the Guidelines in the final 3 months of the project.

During the process, basic principles and priorities defined through the new European Youth Goals will be taken into account, providing a vital European dimension for locally adapted solutions.

Not the least, the international context provided by the participants coming from 7 different European countries will enable the incorporation of various cultural aspects.

LAYOUTH comes from Local Action for Youth. But it is also the combination of LAYOUT and YOUTH. Not the least, it also aims a call towards YOU with the middle letters of the newly created word.

The project involves 8 cities which were nominated as European Youth Capital title bearers in time: Braga in 2012, Maribor in 2013, Thessaloniki in 2014, Cluj-Napoca in 2015, Varna in 2017, Novi Sad in 2019, Amiens in 2020 and Klaipeda in 2021.

All participating cities have their own realities. Their approach towards youth-related strategic and operational planning and ecosystem-development through cross-sectorial cooperation (public, non-governmental and private) is absolutely diversified. However, cooperation is possible between these cities as there is common ground regarding the importance given to young people, their engagement, connection and empowerment as active citizens of their city’s life, and there are mutually accepted principles like co-management of strategic initiatives between the municipality and youth actors.

We will change the approach on how cities should deliver for young people in a simple yet well- structured way. At least we will try. We believe LAYOUTH will become a brand and reference point on how to work for and with young people through action planning and integrated efforts of cooperation in a participatory and inclusive way. We believe these 8 cities, through their record up to this moment and their strong commitment towards youth will really be able to ignite this innovation.

The main goal of the project is to consolidate the local planning and implementation systems serving youth in participating cities, aligned with European youth-related policies while setting a standard and a wide pool of intellectual resources through which any other European city can align its own local efforts towards young generation.

We defined the following specific objectives for our endeavour:

SO1: to create a modern, modular, complex but still easily adaptable framework and scalable model of delivering full cycles of urban youth ecosystem development built on sustainable approaches;

SO2: to improve the actual youth-related planning and delivery system of participating cities on strategic and operational level putting high emphasis on engagement, connection and empowerment of young people;

SO3: to engage and to empower key organisational and organisational actors in a learning process through which their capacity of a cooperation, co-creation and co-management based local action planning and delivering in the field of youth becomes sustainable while adding significantly to the quality of life of young citizens;

OD (organizational development): to develop the capacity of involved partners in being key actors of the future development of youth ecosystems in their own cities and to assist other cities in addressing the same issue.

… IN KEY NUMBERS …

• 1 modern, modular framework in 9 European languages, available open source for scaling and multiplication, enhanced by online tools and professional expertise,

• 1 new brand for local action planning and delivery for youth in cities of Europe: LAYOUTH,

• 5 key elements of a framework for urban action planning for youth in Europe (white paper – toolkit – study cases on implemented action plans – pool of facilitators – resource centre),

• 8 implemented Local Action Plans for Youth in 8 cities from 8 countries, which are harmonised by methodology. All of them evaluated through study cases.

• 25 tools of empowering young people at local level collected in a single toolkit,

• 32 youth facilitators organised in a European network which can be deployed in an international environment in order to provide further scaling,

• 7,680 stakeholders consulted in the process,

• 24,000 young people consulted about their feelings about the city and their needs and contributions to their city’s life and development,

• 3,000+ European level stakeholders targeted by dissemination activities and publications,

• 1.5 million euro allocated for youth programmes and initiatives in 2020 in participating cities,

• 7.8 million euro allocated local budgets in partner cities for youth related investments for 2020 and 2021

The project will result in the creation of a new, modern, modular, and scalable model for delivering local action plans for youth. All characteristics are carefully considered here. Modern, as something easy to understand and to apply in practice, something to which youth organisations, groups of young people can relate to easily. Modular as something which has the quality of being understood piece by piece. Adaptable as a framework which can be easily filled with local specific content while the framework itself keeps intact. And scalable as being able to be extended to an unlimited number of cities, a characteristic derived also from its adaptability.

The project is built on:

* 3 intellectual outputs

* 3 multiplier events

* 3 training activities

* 8 project meetings

* 8 partner/8 country cooperation

The institution of the title "Youth Capital of Romania" follows similar  principles to those of the title of "European Youth Capital", a title managed by the European Youth Forum, whose member is also the Youth Council of Romania. The title "Youth Capital of Romania" wants to provide a unique opportunity for cities in the country to transform their visions into concrete development projects with the active participation of young people.

Each city that receives this title has the opportunity to develop a comprehensive framework program that aims at urban development through the participation of young people, capitalizing on increasingly professional projects, addressing new topics of interest to young people and encouraging the development of new and innovative ideas regarding participation. active involvement of young people in community life. Trying to establish new models of structured dialogue and citizen empowerment and mobilization, these annual programs make a significant contribution to the process of harmonizing urban diversity, preserving the diverse identity of communities, but at the same time promoting tolerance based on communication and community action.

The "Youth Capital of Romania" can become the most efficient tool for mobilizing the local resources for a better economic and social development based on the real needs and objectives of the young people.

By creating a framework program targeting youth as the main factor of urban development we can draw the attention of the decision-making bodies at local level to the importance of including young people, the local community in the decision-making process, but also to empower young people to be actively involved in the development of the society where they live.

By preparing the applications for the title of "Youth Capital of Romania", several cities in the country will make a commitment regarding the creation of a permanent dialogue framework with young people, a commitment that will be beneficial to the cities not only during the contest, but also in the long term.

Promoting a sense of responsibility and encouraging the active involvement of young people in community development will lead to the creation of a society based on common values. In terms of long-term benefits, young people actively involved in the development of the city become active and responsible citizens, loyal and productive members of the community. Moreover, by encouraging transparent governance, an open attitude and by promoting the principle of associativity and inclusion, the program can generate greater openness to cross-sectoral collaboration in the cities of the country.

The increased visibility of youth activities, civil society initiatives and volunteer programs that such a program can provide will also help to create regional partnerships and implement development projects based on exchanges of good practices.

MANAGEMENT OF THE TITLE "THE CAPITAL OF YOUTH IN ROMANIA"

Governance

To implement the program, the initiators created the Governance Commission of the title of the Youth Capital of Romania. The role of this commission is to ensure the management of this title, including the creation and management of the methodological framework, the creation of premises for the existence of a permanent secretariat, the creation of an independent jury and the creation of conditions for the professional monitoring of the programs through which Romanian cities implement large-scale youth programs, under aegis of this title.

The partners involved in Governance are:

Youth Council of Romania, representative entity of the youth of Romania,
The Youth Federation of Cluj, an entity created in the context of the Cluj-Napoca 2015 program, the European Youth Capital,
PONT Group, a group of youth experts, the initiator of the measures to prepare the Youth Capital of Romania based on the experience of the candidacy of the municipality of Cluj-Napoca for the European Youth Capital 2015,
Romanian Commercial Bank, leader of the Romanian banking system.

In a similar way to the European Youth Capital programme, national youth capital initiatives encourage cities to both continue and expand the implementation of new ideas and innovative projects with regards to the active participation of young people in society and seeks to present a role model for the further development of youth policies in other European municipalities.

The goal of the project was to develop the skills and capacities of key youth workers involved in the creation and management of national youth capital programmes from Ukraine, Serbia, Bulgaria, Romania and Moldova.

The general objective of the project was to enhance cooperation and policy creation in the framework of National and Regional Youth Capital titles in Eastern Europe and to provide a quality complementary tool of enforcing cities to invest in youth, in addition to the European Youth Capital title.

Specific objectives were:

• O1: to develop the capacity and competencies of youth workers to plan, manage and develop national level framework programmes and to provide hands-on, on-spot access of youth workers from Eastern European countries involved in youth-related movements on the national level to the experience and expertise of cities holding (European and national) youth capital titles;

• O2: to create a regional level policy framework and operational network of organisations involved in the development and management of specific national youth capital programmes, including the creation of a portfolio of new and enhanced social innovation projects and initiatives with a special focus on young people, which can be implemented at local and network level during 2019-2021;

• O3: to lay down the basis for the creation of e regional youth development index in Eastern Europe.

This project added to the professional development of youth workers by developing and consolidating their competencies. Furthermore, the project added to the capacity of partner organisations and partners of these partners in delivering quality level national youth capital programmes and a proper management of these programmes.

All partners involved in the project were entities who are actively working on national or regional youth capital initiatives, such as:

• PONT Group, Romania, consortium leader, creator of the Romanian Youth Capital and of the Cluj-Napoca 2015 European Youth Capital programme,
• Association " Varna - European Youth Capital", Bulgaria, managers of the Varna 2017, European Youth Capital Programme,
• Novi Sad European Youth Capital- OPENS, Serbia, creators and managers of the Novi Sad 2019 European Youth Capital programme,
• Ukrainian Institute for International Politics, Ukraine, creators of the Ukrainian Youth Capital programme,
• National Youth Council from Moldova, partners in the Youth Capital of Moldova programme.

The project provided with the following results on the level of participants (quantitative):

• 3 youth worker mobility activities involving 5 partner organisations from 5 countries in Eastern Europe (2 EU, 1 EU-candidate and 2 Eastern Partnership countries),

• 66 participants with active involvement in 38 working sessions,

• 3 study case opportunities for participants in the hosting cities of Varna, Bulgaria, Baia Mare, Romania and Novi-Sad, Serbia,

• 1 portfolio with 10 additional level cooperation projects ideas in the framework of National Youth Capital titles and programmes,

• at least 25 organisations involved through their representatives in the youth worker mobility activities including the 5 partner organisations but also another at least 20 organisations through their representatives chose to take part in the second activity of the project,

• a network of 5 organisations from 5 Eastern European countries committed to youth participation in urban development, with an outreach to additional more than 20 organisations in all participating countries.

The main outcome of the project is te policy document called 11QUESTIONS ON NATIONAL AND REGIONAL YOUTH CAPITALS, addressing the following:

1. What is a National Youth Capital title? What is the general context?

2 .Who should consider creating a National Youth Capital title and programme?

3 .Who should govern a National Youth Capital Programme?

4. What are the key elements of a National Youth Capital programme?

5. How should cities be selected as ones holding the title? What kind of cities should access this title?

6. What are key aspects of implementing and monitoring programmes delivered by cities?

7. What are the benefits of a large scale thematic urban youth programme?

8. What are the first steps in creating a National Youth Capital title?

9. What are the benefits of a national youth capital programme for a country or a region?

10. What are the other underlying effects of a National Youth Capital programme and its editions?

11. What additional efforts could be put in place to enhance urban youth ecosystems?

The project took place in 2018-2019.