The Senate of Berlin has launched a programme to foster youth participation in Berlin. The Youth Democracy Fund (“Jugend-Demokratiefonds Berlin”) is a funding programme for bodies engaged in working with young people between 12 and 21 years of age as well as an opportunity for young people themselves to apply for a funding if they want to carry out projects that deal with democracy, tolerance, prevention of violence and discrimination in manifold ways.

I would like to present a few aspects of Berlin’s programme and I am curious to hear about the places where you are from. Do the municipalities and authorities engage in implementing programmes to foster (youth) participation? How does it work? And: Does it work out?

I hope we can gather experience from where we reside. Participants in this session will (hopefully :) …

- learn about public funding programmes

- hear best practice and no-gos when it comes to funding

- gather inspiration for future projects and ideas for future funding of (participative) youth projects

I am looking forward to your contributions!

Disclaimer: I am working with Democratic Youth Foundation in Berlin which is one of the institutions working on the implementation of the Youth Democracy Fund. Feel free to check www.stark-gemacht.de for more information.

Get in touch:

www.stark-gemacht.de | www.facebook.com/STARKgemacht | www.twitter.com/STARKgemacht

Short version: I think Blogs, social media and "community media" may contribute a lot to understanding societies in EU member states. I'd like to show you a few and I am eager to hear about community media that you know.

Never heard of community media? No problem, read some here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Community_media Curios? Join us!

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Longer version:

We will hardly come anywhere close to one European Society if we keep complaining about the deviding lines between today’s existing European Societies. Even if it has become easier to cross borders in times of Facebook and Easyjet, it is still mass media that are responsible for the portrait of foreign countries in a given society.

Earlier this year, when speaking about the “European Idea”, Federal President Gauck suggested we should aim for an “innovation to foster more Europe, perhaps like an ARTE channel for everyone” referring to the bilingual TV channel arte which is operated by French and German journalists. arte made a contribution to today’s good mutual Franco-German understanding.

Since none of us wants to wait until someone jumps out of the box and hands over a fully operating European media channel, be it online, on TV or in press, we can work on a starting point ourselves. Community media offer a wide range of free and easy-to-use editing as well as publishing tools, so many people create their own high-quality-media. I would like to focus on cross-border community media that already deal with bordering countries and the European Union member states. Let’s explore Europe’s landscape of international community media together!

I would like to give you a few impressions of www.Polen.Pl, a website that is hosted by a Polish-German team that is spread over both countries. The rest is up to us! Which community media (Websites/Social Media-Channels/…) do we know? What do they do and what do they contribute to getting to know our neighbouring countries? What can we learn from that?

Wanna show some and speak about them? Go ahead and add yours to the etherpad in advance, so that we can speak about it: http://yourpart.eu/p/ybcvie_communitymedia

Get in touch: www.Polen.pl | www.facebook.com/polenpl | www.twitter.com/polen_pl

Find President Gauck's speech here: http://www.bundespraesident.de/SharedDocs/Reden/EN/JoachimGauck/Reden/2013/130222-Europe.html;jsessionid=C87C093651E2AC472B84EC3A4B3A0B06.2_cid293?nn=1891680

the youthpart guideline-process needs feedback from the adressed young people, - you :-) Participate! The Link to the actual version of the guidelines will follow.

While the history of direct democracy dates back to the ancient Greek and Athens, in 2013 most democracies are represantative democracies, that only occasionaly resort to letting the citizens decide on specific issues direclty.

While a direct democracy comes closest to the ideal of a society made of equals, that all participate, decide and try to foster the greater good, this form of government also comes with many issues.

eParticipation, thanks to the rise of the internet and new technologies, could provide a big push for enabling direct democracy and active citizenship in a modern society.

In this session I would give a very short introduction of the history of democracy, show some examples of successes and failures of direct democracy (for example in Switzerland or California), and then SPEND MOST OF THE TIME DISCUSSING pros and cons of direct democracy to share our experiences, views and perspectives on the subject.

Possible discussion topics:

What possibilites does eParticipation provide?

Is direct democracy a practical concept?

Is the average human to gullable/lazy/disinterested to be a proper citizen?

What are the risks of direct democracy?

Discussions regarding "participation" could also involve writing and sharing a couple paragraphs on a selected topic and group work.

Questions such as:

- Participation, what for?

- What is the difference between political and cultural participation, is there one?

- To reach what goals?

- How to monitor it?

- What is the point of having an initiative?

- Is there funding/guidance/support available for projects by young people?

Topics such as

- official vs unofficial channels of participation

official channels are typically closed, slow and bureaucratic while unofficial ones are flexible, adaptable and creative (the greatest technical wisdom doesn't live long in bureaucracy)

- How can bureaucracy be flexible and adapt quickly? (ensure with dynamic planning processes)

- Doing risk and accessibility planning (who needs to have access, when, what is meaningful to what group of people and how do they find what is relevant information to them)

--> scenario planning (creating "target group persons" through which to observe, example: Matt, 16yrs old, has a youtube sketch show, wants to do short films)

Check out this website for information on Aloitekanava (Initiative Channel), a Finnish E-democracy Service for Young People: http://sheryica.org/story/initiative-channel-e-democracy-service-young-people

Here are some questions related to the topics in Youth BarCamp which I would be interested to know about. These questions aroused to me because many of the issues that are brought up as a thematic framework in Youth BarCamp are new to me. It is not necessary to discuss all of them but maybe some of them.

-How is online youth participation implemented in different countries? What kind of good practices exist in your home country?

-What kind of ICT tools have you used as influence methods?

-What is the most effective way to act as an active citizen in online environments?

Should we try to create a totally new social media service for participation? I mean in a bigger level, not just different services for different countries. It could have somehow different levels.

See this as an App in your phone, which could come part of your everyday life.

And then how we could create this service as popular "active citizen online environment" as Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Instagram etc..?

Really "have no idea" how to make this thing happen and the way it would really work or is this even a good idea, but that would be the thing to to discuss!

Open Government is based on three topics:

- Participation

- Collaboration

and

- Data

Do we realy need all three bases?

Is OpenData a requirement for (e)-participation?

Why do we need OpenData?

(This session idea is not so tidy up, it is early, we missed our connection train. [senk ju vor träwelling with Deutsche Bahn]. So please be considerate ;) )