Relacje z efektów projektu w gminach

The case of Elbląg

a description of the process and results of the project: „South Baltic Youth Core Group Network”

The City Youth Council of Ebląg was established in the Resolution VIII/145/2003 of the City Council of Elbląg of 26 June 2003 concerning the establishment of the Youth City Council of Elbląg and Statute granting

results in short

In Elbląg, young citizens participated in the decision-making process of the following public decisions and together with the authorities they addressed the following public issues:

1. Participatory Budgeting – its accessibility and increasing the interest of the youth in the budget
2. Youth volunteering – its promotion and financing as well as a proposal to create a Card of Volunteer in Elbląg

the process – a description of undertaken actions

The first debate between authorities and young people – so-called round table – 12 April 2019

The topic of the first round table debate was the participatory budgeting.

The event aimed to carry out consultations and talks about the participatory budgeting (PB), its accessibility to the youth and increasing the interest among young people in that topic. The debate was attended by the representatives of the City of Elbląg: Vice President Edward Pietrulewicz and Janusz Nowak, the City Council with its President Antoni Czyżyk. The youth was represented by the Youth City Council of Elbląg and members of school governments.

During the debate, the following issues were discussed:

• What should the role of the Youth City Centre and the youth in the Participatory Budget be? What should the promotion of the PB look like? How can we improve it?
• Thanks to what (specific) mechanism or actions can we raise awareness of the residents about the PB?
• Specific ideas for the project implementation in the PB.
• What help path should be offered by the office from the moment of the project winning to its implementation? (from success to implementation)
• Should there be one budget without divisions or should there be a determined financial range for each project?

The four-hour work resulted in determining valuable conclusions and topics, which will be continued by the City Office. One of them is an urgent need to introduce a visual identification of Participatory Budgeting as well as to publish a correctly filled application form together with a project description on the PG website. The biggest excitement was caused by opinions that the budget should not be divided and the topic of promotion of how many new ideas were brought up that day.

The young people presented conclusions and recommendations from the round table at the session of the City Council of Elbląg – so-called first public hearing – 19 September 2019.

On 19 September 2019, during the Elbląg City Council session, a public hearing took place in the presence of President Witold Wróblewski, Vice President Janusz Nowak and Edward Pietrulewicz, Members of Polish Parliament Elżbieta Gelert and Jerzy Wilk, Directors of the City Office Departments and all councillors. It was a consequence of the session of the Regional Round Table dedicated to the participatory budgeting.

President of the Youth City Council of Elbląg Aleksandra Dąbrowska presented the young people’s conclusions and recommendations concerning the participatory budgeting to the councillors of the City of Elbląg.

The speech was registered and is available here  https://youtu.be/nVPxjrcoSUs.

The second debate between authorities and young people – so-called round table – 30 October 2019

The topic of the second round table debate was youth volunteering in Elbląg.

The debate was attended by the representatives of the City Council of Elbląg, the President of Elbląg Foundation and the Director of the European Cooperation Centre Światowid. The youth was represented by the Youth City Council of Elbląg as well as school governments members.

During the debate, the following issues were discussed:

• Card of Volunteer. What should it look like? What does it aim at? How to gather young people around the topic of volunteering?
• Profile, qualifications, character traits which help be a volunteer. Support in the verification of behaviours which would be awarded in the Card.
• Area of volunteering promotion. How to get through the abundance of information in media and show that volunteering is most important? How to promote volunteering among the residents of Elbląg? Who should handle this area?
• Volunteering funding
• Which body should supervise volunteering? Who should be responsible for the affiliation of volunteers?

The young people presented conclusions and recommendations from the round table at the session of the City Council of Elbląg – so-called second public hearing – 30 December 2019

During the Elbląg City Council session, President of the Youth City Council Aleksandra Dąbrowska presented the conclusions from the so-called round table on the subject of volunteering.

The speech took place in the presence of the whole City Council of Elbląg, President Witold Wróblewski, Vice Presidents and the Directors of the City Office Departments in Elbląg. Moreover, the session was attended by the Members of Polish Parliament Monika Falej and Jerzy Wilk as well as media representatives (Truso TV, Radio Olsztyn, portel.pl, info.elblag.pl, dziennikelblaski.pl).

context

In Elbląg, we worked and created the project together with Bogusław Walewski (a teacher of II Secondary School in Elbląg and the curator of the Youth City Council) and Marek Nowosad (from Radio Elbląg).