YUPAD – YoUth PArticipatory budgets empowering young people by Marko Paunovic | marko.paunovic@ubc.net
The “YUPAD” project aims to enable young people to understand, practice, and influence youth participatory budgets across European cities. The objectives are to develop a comprehensive view of already existing grass-root and policy practices in youth participatory budgets combining the research, policy, and youth work practices; to create and put in place local policy mechanisms for participatory budgets; to develop the capacity of educators to provide quality non-formal educational activities for young people on topics of youth participatory budgets; to enable local authorities to put in practice youth participatory budgets using big data while addressing digital transformation; and to ensure the sustainability of project results by developing the community of practitioners from across Europe. The activities will comprise Management and quality assurance (WP1); “Food for Thought”: Recipes, The Fair, The Cookbook (WP2); YUPAD Calculator, bees’ methodology and the platform: “Big Data Youth Budgets” & Piloting (WP3); Capacity Building for Educators and Local Authorities (WP4); and Policy and Sustainability (WP5). The results will shed light on the capacity and skills of young people raised; capacity of educators to provide quality
non-formal educational activities for young people on topics of youth participatory budgets; capacity of local authorities to put in practice youth participatory budgets using big data tools; whether long-term cooperation between key stakeholders in all partners’ countries has advanced; and if political level cooperation and recognition of youth participation on local level paves the way for a systematic change towards the implementation of innovative participatory budget solutions. The impact will be directly measured on targeted groups during the project activities (Consortia, Young People, Educators, Local Authorities, and Community of Practice), and indirectly on other stakeholders targeted only by communication, dissemination, networking, and sustainability activities. There will be a short impact during the project duration, which will also have effects in the medium and long-term (2 and 5 years afterward, respectively). This project will be jointly implemented by 11 partners including Out of the Box International, Union of Baltic Cities, CESIE, CSI, SÜDWIND, RD IKSD, OPENS, IED, Homo Eminens and VM University. The project was developed by UBC Brussels Antenna and supported by Erasmus + programme of the EU.
