This is the 10th year of the cooperation among Erasmus+ Youth agencies in the field of youth participation in municipal decisions and democracy, and the 5th year that the cooperation is an official long term cooperation acknowledged by the European Commission, called Democracy Reloading Partnership. And by now we have 3 in-depth yearly evaluation studies about the implementation of the project on national and European levels, and a detailed evaluation report about the first online tool of Democracy Reloading.
The new website and the e-learning tool
Based on the detailed evaluation report on the first three years of the online toolkit we started to create a second edition of the Democracy Reloading website in 2024, which resulted in launching the new website two weeks ago. It is more informative and explanatory including the description of Democracy Reloading, providing guidance in basic advocacy for youth participation in municipal decisions, a collection of inspiring video testimonials from practitioners, a detailed description of the training offer and the online tools, and guidance on finding national support. The next part of the website will be an e-learning tool for municipal youth departments giving step-by-step guidance in planning youth participation in municipal decisions. We are involving municipal youth participation officers in the creation of the concept and the actual online tool. The new e-learning tool will be available from autumn this year. You will find it under point 1 of Our trainings on this page:
https://democracy-reloading.eu/en/our-solutions
The training offer in 2025
In 2025 we are organising 8 educational activities together with the member national agencies.
In February we organised an Expert Seminar in Utrecht, the Netherlands hosted by the Dutch National Youth Institute NJI, Erasmus + Youth agency for 50 trainers and participation experts from 15 European countries with the aim of developing national and European activities and tool for municipalities.
In April the Slovakian national agency , NIVAM is hosting a Study Visit in Kosice about rural youth participation and youth work in collaboration with Europe Goes Local.
In June the Italian Erasmus + agency, AIG is hosting a Municipalities4Democracy training course (its 7th edition) where we will also test the Workbook of municipal youth participation for local youth officers.
In July another edition of the Municipalities4Democracy training module will be organised in Segovia, Spain hosted by the Spanish national youth institute, INJUVE.
In early September the Norwegian Erasmus+ Youth agency will host a ProjectLab in cooperation with Europe Goes Local for municipal youth policy officers on how to design Erasmus+ projects to develop municipal youth participation.
In autumn the Portuguese Erasmus+ Youth agency will host the second edition of the Youth&Municipalities4Democracy training course, and the Bulgarian agency will organise a second edition of the ProjectLab in cooperation with Europe Goes Local. And you can expect one more training course in Cyprus in the end of this year.
Democracy Reloading Webinars
We are organising four webinars in 2025. Each webinar is focusing on one of the 4 key tasks that ensure a more successful implementation of youth participation in municipal decision-making. Each webinar will be 90 minutes long and will include a presentation of practice of a local municipal youth policy officer and an introduction to one of the key tasks to be implemented for better success based on the Democracy Reloading approach.
You can register here: http://trainings.salto-youth.net/13249
The support tools
We are working hard on a new publication called M4DEM Workbook to support the learning process of municipal youth policy officers in developing democratic youth participation in municipal decisions. We are testing the draft content during the next M4DEM training course in Florence in Italy, and then we can publish it. Each participant of the future M4DEM courses will receive a copy before the training course. We will reprint the popular Democracy Reloading Reflection Cards in 2025, we plan to include both the questions and the statements on the card to support discussions and reflections.
The Community of Practices
We established an online community of practitioners, who are working in the field of municipal youth participation policy. Until now it has 110 members, and it is growing after each Democracy Reloading training course. From this year will provide active moderation for this community to inspire exchanges and cooperation among the members. Send us an email with a link to your facebook profile if you are a municipal youth policy officer and you would like to join this closed Facebook group: democracyreloading@gmail.com
The Expert Pool
We are working on building an Expert Pool of devoted and competent youth participation experts and trainers who can support the realisation of national and European activities, and also contribute to the development of tools and methods. In 2025 we are establishing an officially recognised pool, and start supporting the training of its members.
Collaboration with partners
The main partners of Democracy Reloading are DYPALL Network, Europe Goes Local, SALTO Participation and the Council of Europe Youth Department. DYPALL is a natural collaborator as a European ngo working in the field, and in 2025 as previously, they are taking over tasks in relation to social media promotion and publications. Europe Goes Local is the closest sister project (another Erasmus+ long term cooperation) as it is supporting the development of local youth work, we have had and we are planning joint Study Visits and ProjectLabs in 2025, and we are also examining ways of developing the Expert Pool together. We are working closely with SALTO Participation to find synergies with their work, and mutually support each other. And last but not least we established cooperation with the Council of Europe, due to their project Democracy, Here and Now, and after a successful joint event in Strasbourg last year we are planning to organise a second joint event in 2026.
We are looking for further partners who are working with local municipalities, who can support the promotion of our training course and online tools.