Q&A :: Youth empowered

Young people explore opportunities for participation in their local community and school – two NGOs show them how.

The Civis Polonus and the Field for Dialogue Foundations NGOs have offered a helping a hand to local authorities in six borough in southern Poland, offering their support and know-how to both the young participants and adults involved in the project.

And as sociologist Anna Kordasiewicz, from the Field for Dialogue foundation asserts, teenagers do want to have a real impact on the public sphere and become conscious partners of the administration if you let them, and show them how.

“The important thing is that it was the decision of the local governments to participate in this project,” Anna Kordasiewicz told Q&A host Alicja Baczyńska. “We offered them hard work, with our support, and we feel that the localities that volunteered for the project were determined to change something in terms of their youth policy, so there is an actual chance that the results will be more stable.”