How could civic engagement and empowerement look like when we have the opportunity to experiment and test new approaches? That’s the question YDF strives to answer through an innovative dialogue forum which will be held in three countries (Poland, Czechia and Slovakia) and combine CivTech with live deliberations. YDF on top of that incorporates gamification elements to it’s process to fulfill the potential of new incentives.
Project is being implemented as part of Youth Leadership for Emerging Future done by Ashoka Poland, Save the Children and Humanitarian Leadership Academy.
Why?
We see the unfulfilled potential of youth civic engagement and community empowerement. Youth is disengaged because they lack incentive structures. On the other side there are not enough of incentive structures because stakeholders, institutions deem youth as disengaged. It’s a chicken - egg problem.
No one is a solitary island. Human civilization and progress is driven by language, dialogue and cooperation in action. Power for a positive change in society thus lies in vibrant communities. Nonetheless our collective potential seems unfulfilled. Eurobarometer 2024 reported that only 15% of youth participated in an organization with volunteering activities; 18% in youth organizations. Can we do better?
We believe that there are no lazy citizens, just badly designed games.
The question is therefore what could these games look like when we have the opportunity to experiment? What kind of incentives have the capacity to fulfill our potential as active citizens and changemakers?
That’s why we should:
- Understand the barriers of youth civic participation.
- Design, create and test new incentive structures.
- Connect and network civic actors and engaged citizens.
- Build bridges and share good practices across borders.
- Prove that better incentives lead to better participation.
Expected outcomes
The project will contribute to long-term social change in three countries by:
- Providing a new blueprint for functional model of citizen engagement. The output of the forum will consist of a complex report mapping the process and a recommendation manual for creating new incentive structures for (not only) youth participation in civic life.
- Creating a new network of civic actors that could be engaged in various other international conversations and collective problem solving.
- Providing custom reports of the discussion outcomes in every participating (ambassador’s) micro-community. This means that we will breakdown the overall results of the digital modules into micro reports that will lead to broader understanding of communities regarding the barriers and solutions to better participation.
Goals
- Conducting an innovative international dialogue forum.
- Engaging 2000 participants from three countries (Poland, Czechia, Slovakia) in DEMDIS digital discussions.
- Mapping the barriers of participation and motivations for civic engagement.
- Proposing recommendations for better youth engagement to institutions and civic organizations.
How?
Outputs of YDF
- Report of with qualitative analysis of the results on local, national and international level
- Manual with recommendations for better youth civic engagement based on good practices and consensus
- Newly formed network of civic actors
Gamification elements for participants
- YDF will climax in a live deliberative weekend in Kraków on 20. to 22. September 2024.
- Selected participants will have their travel, accomodation and catering costs covered.
- The forum will consist of 20 participants selected from the 1st digital DEMDIS discussion:
a) 16 participants will be selected by a randomized stratified selection.
I. The most active participants will be part of the national pool of candidates for the live forum.
II. 16 places for participants are divided proportionally for each country:
• 7 places for Poland;
• 5 places for Czech republic;
• 4 places for Slovakia.
III. Final invitations will be sent to randomly selected participants from each country’s national pool.
IV. In the light of the topic of youth participation, elligible participants for these 16 slots muste be between 18 to 30 years.
b) 4 slots for participants will be attibuted to the Ambassadors of the YDF with the most points from the 1st digital DEMDIS discussion.
Gamification elements for Ambassadors of YDF
- Each Ambassador:
a) will recieve it’s community discussion link through which he/she will engage it’s community.
b) will be attibuted points which are equal to the number of votes from their link (community). This method combines the appreciation of qualitative and quantitative participation - it’s not a “popularity contest”. - After the closure of the 1st digital DEMDIS discussion, the organizational team will create a scoreboard of the most successful Ambassadors.
- Ambassadors which will be placed on the first 4 places will automatically recieve an personalized invitation to the live deliberative event.
