Keywords

1 Introduction

The European Youth Week 2019 was a project carried out from 1 May to 30 September 2019 by the Regional Volunteer Centre (Regionalne Centrum Wolontariatu) in Kielce, Poland. Such Youth Weeks take place every 2 years in all European countries participating in Erasmus+ and are funded within the Erasmus+ framework. They are part of the EU’s approach known as Structured Dialogue, which aims at consulting young people on topics that are important for the European Commission and for the European Union in general to help develop policies (European Commission 2022). The local organiser, the Regional Volunteer Centre, is active in Kielce, a city with around 200,000 inhabitants located in central Poland between Warsaw and Kraków and the capital of the Świętokrzyskie Voivodeship.Footnote 1

The project was part of numerous measures taken by the Regional Volunteer Centre in the field of youth work. The organisation has been active since 2005. It engages mainly in projects within Erasmus+ and the European Solidarity Corps, which is the EU programme for the exchange of international volunteers (European Union 2022). Its main issues are youth participation, leadership development, and local and international volunteering. It trains volunteers and volunteer managers and provides space for young people who want to be active and get involved in the local community. Furthermore, it carries out international projects. The NGO is also part of Eurodesk, a European youth information network working that works as a support organisation for Erasmus+. In this context, it organises debates on topics like youth participation, human rights, democracy, and local democracy. Furthermore, the centre provides some local and national volunteering programmes. It also works with decision-makers, supports youth councils and youth councillors, and is a member of the Polish National Youth Council.

The various projects are backed by linkages between NGO members and other actors. Some members of the organisation work in schools, kindergartens, youth clubs, and social centres and coordinate international volunteering for various organisations. The centre has a number of project partners abroad, for example, in Bulgaria, Spain, the United Kingdom, Italy, Georgia, Armenia, Ukraine, and Germany. It also cooperates in projects that go beyond Europe, e.g. in Egypt, Jordan, Algeria, Senegal, Uganda, South Africa, and India.

2 The Project Environment: A Divided Country with Many Challenges

To understand how European youth projects work, one needs to look at the local and regional environment in which the organisation operates. When it comes to elections, the west of Poland is more liberal and the east is much more conservative (Zarycki 2015). Moreover, there are differences between the big cities and the villages. In general, the people in the region of Kielce are between these extremes. As the interviewed project manager reports, they seem to be satisfied with their lives, although the actual situation in Poland is shaped by the stress factors of the COVID-19 pandemic and the war in Ukraine. In his view, the people in Kielce are openhearted, very hospitable to refugees, and very involved. Regarding youth participation, there is still room for improvement because there are a lot of young people who just do not know what possibilities they have. Therefore, the Regional Volunteer Centre organises a lot of European projects for young people (Marcinkiewicz 2018).

Unemployment among young people is not a big issue in Poland. In the region of the organisation, the unemployment rate is about 7%, making it one of the lowest ever (Statistical Office in Kielce 2021). The more important problem is that people who are very qualified often do not get jobs which correspond with their qualifications. At the same time, there are companies that report not finding suitable applicants for their job offers. Thus, the labour market is influenced by out-migration (Kaczmarczyk and Okólski 2008). Another problem is that the minimum salary in Poland has risen considerably throughout the last few years, while those who are paid just above the minimum wage feel no change. The result is frustration, especially because the payment is not adjusted for the qualification. For example, a facility manager at a school earns almost as much as a teacher who has completed a university degree. Another consequence could be a social crisis, because more and more people could quit their jobs because they are severely underpaid.

3 The Project: Involving and Empowering Young People

In 2019, the European Youth Week events taking place across Europe addressed the overarching theme “Democracy and me” (European Union 2019). In Kielce, young people organised consultations with other young people and inhabitants of the city. The first aim of the project was to start dialogue between people, especially regarding local issues. The second aim was also to foster dialogue between decision-makers and the young people in the city. Thirdly, the project aimed at promoting the European Youth Week, Erasmus+, and youth policy.

The project was led by a person with long-term experience in local and international voluntary work, Michał Braun. He acted as president of the Regional Volunteer Centre for 5 years and is a local and city councillor as well. His motivation to work with young people in Europe is based on his belief in the aims of local engagement, the support of young people, and his desire to share his own Erasmus+ experience. It was easy for the organisation to get information about the possibility of EU funding because the volunteer centre is very experienced and, as previously mentioned, also acts as a Eurodesk contact point, where it informs other young people about funding possibilities. Furthermore, the organisation has already received EU funding for several years and carried out several projects before, including previous European Youth Weeks.

According to Michał Braun, in many projects, experienced adults hire inexperienced young people for the project’s realisation. The centre, in contrast, involved young people in the process of organising the European Youth Week from the very beginning. While it was one of many projects for the organisation, it was the first project of its kind for most of the young people. All of the volunteers as well as the main organiser were teenagers who received help from experienced volunteers in all stages. The centre invited the most experienced and active volunteers to prepare the project funding to give them the opportunity to start their own project. All working packages were, therefore, developed by or with young people. They came up with an idea, wrote the description, and inserted it in the application format.

While the application form was written in English, project activities of the centre were carried out in Polish. The centre involved some international volunteers and discussed with them in English. However, in most parts the project was Polish and local in its character.

At the beginning of the project, the organisers built some tents on the main square of the city and in the city park, where they set up flip chart papers with questions regarding the city. People could come and answer questions, for example: What are the things I would like to change in my city? What are the things that bother me? Or what are the opportunities that I like in the city?Footnote 2 They wrote their answers down on pieces of paper, and then the volunteers summarised them in a consultation report. They chose the most important topics, like education or city transportation.

The centre additionally organised debates. One frequently mentioned issue was that public transportation does not meet the needs of the young people in the region. The coordinator and the volunteers, therefore, invited people who are responsible for public transportation in the city to enter into a discussion. As shown in this example, topics that are important for the residents of the city were debated in public. After five consultations, the centre also invited schools to take part in the project. From every debate, the organisation’s team of young people made a recommendation that they could use in the final debate. This final debate was to discuss how current problems, such as public transportation, could actually change to better meet the needs of the citizens of Kielce.

Finally, the centre organised an event to present the final results of the consultations to the city councillors and city decision-makers. Furthermore, it invited other NGOs that offer something for young people and organised an event in the city park. Each NGO that was present had a booth. The young people could visit them and get information about possibilities for participation. There were also a few outdoor activities.

4 Outcomes: New Perspectives and Changed Minds

In general, the organisation concludes that most project goals were achieved. It estimates that approximately one hundred people took part in the discussions, and around five hundred people got involved in the project in total, for example, by participating in dialogues in public places. These participants got the chance to discuss relevant issues, get new information and perspectives, and possibly change their minds. The aim to reach young people was fulfilled, especially because the young people were directly involved in the project’s development and organisation. In contrast to adults, it was easy for these young people to reach their friends, classmates, and people from their schools by posting information on social media.

In addition to raising public awareness and reaching particular audiences, an important outcome was improving the capacities and competences of the young people directly involved in the project’s development and management. Since they were involved at every stage, they learned a lot, including how to plan and realise a project and how to mobilise funding. They surprised many with their high competence despite their young age, and they became the best ambassadors of the programme. Therefore, the organisation stresses the importance of investing in and engaging potential young leaders so that other young people will follow.

It seems that the project has also resulted in a change of minds within the organisation’s team, although such an effect usually takes some time and is, therefore, mostly caused by several projects and not just one. There was, for example, a young man with nationalistic views involved in several projects. Over the course of those projects, he made some friends from other countries.

And after these projects, we had a lot of debates with him. And then he said, okay, maybe you are right and maybe I should study more. And what he did—imagine, this really nationalistic guy—he started studying Arabic studies in UK. And like last year, he went for holidays to Jordan to spend some time with these religious leaders and now he is setting up an NGO that aims to work against radicalisation of young people.

Outside the project team, the impact of the project work was not immediately visible in the sense of being able to demonstrate a change caused by the project alone. There was no visible policy change, but an indirect and sustainable empowerment. As Michał Braun put it, “If you make it on the local level and you have young people who say, we want to have a youth councillor or we want to have an additional bus […]. And the city is making this bus run. Then you can really start believing that your voice matters.” Such experiences can make young people really start to believe in themselves and that they can change something. If they believe in their own ability to make a difference—social scientists discuss this experience under the term “political efficacy”—they can better support any project and become more interested and engaged in European politics.

Thus, success means also laying the groundwork for further activities. The organisation plans projects for the future, which are mostly about meeting young people, decision-makers, and providing debates. The people involved in the described project have the expertise to actively support these plans. Moreover, they can use their expertise in other sectors. Students who participated in the centre’s projects and later studied got well-paid jobs in a short time.

In sum, the results and achievements should not be measured for the project term alone but also include later long-term effects. However, the long-term effects never work alone, but in the context of other factors.

5 Success Factors: Flexibility, Networking, and Visible Results

The experience with the European Youth Week suggests that the success factors for projects on EU citizenship and other projects related to Europe and youth include flexibility, networking, expertise, involving the target group, a mixture of practical local and more complex European issues, transnational perspectives, and resources for different activities.

The case of the European Youth Week shows that being successful does not mean sticking strictly to the original project plan. During organisation, the centre was forced to be flexible and change some aspects. For example, a certain number of participants had been expected, but in fact sometimes more or less people came. For the most part, the centre realised what was previously planned in the application form, but it was necessary to react spontaneously in some situations. Nevertheless, the goals were mostly achieved.

The analysis of the case makes clear that being part of an EU-related network and regularly carrying out different EU-related projects and tasks strengthens the prospect for carrying out new projects successfully and for getting new funding. The reason is that the respective actors have better access to information, increase their expertise and experience, and know who to contact (both at the local and European level) to organise interesting events. Expertise also means organisational learning and transferring existing knowledge systematically to new project members.

As the Regional Volunteer Centre stresses, involving the target group is also a crucial success factor. The European Youth Week shows that the key to organising youth projects is not to hand over a project from adults to young people but to involve them at every stage of the project. In the NGO sector, young people easily develop a sense of responsibility and can very quickly be involved in quite responsible tasks, like budgeting and organising activities, given that good supervision by experienced people is ensured. According to Michał Braun, it is important to give them tasks, trust, support, and guidance so that they can really make a change in their lives and in their communities as well.

The organisation also feels that a mixture of local and European issues is necessary. For successful consultations, it seems important that they meet the interests of the people and that their participation can really make a difference. The experience of many youth projects has shown that sometimes even a small policy change is a success, e.g. to have a youth councillor or an additional night bus. A purely “theoretical” discussion, in contrast, can be depressing and demotivating for young people. That is why the centre pleads for European projects at the local level. The work and structures at the European level are very complex. Therefore, in Brussels, young people could only watch lengthy decision-making processes with many actors and could not participate and present their own ideas. It takes too long for the discussed issues to be implemented. For some people, meeting important EU personalities could be motivating, but at local events, they can easily make a difference.

Since combining local and EU affairs is not always possible in single projects and reaching effects requires continuous work, the centre also pleads for a continuous mixture of different measures. In the organisation, for example, some people are active at the local level but are not interested in European matters. On the other hand, there are people who are very much into European affairs, but not into their closest community. Bringing local and EU issues together, therefore, helps to reach both types of people.

Beyond the European Youth Week, the centre strongly believes in the relevance of cross-border projects like youth exchanges, international camps, or training courses. Young people should go abroad and meet people from other countries and learn from each other. After that, they could share their experience and the skills they learned abroad with peers in their hometown communities so that their stays abroad can have a long-term effect at the local level. Being abroad for a couple of weeks or months also strengthens proficiency in English, which in itself is important for European issues. That would be especially effective in the region, where young people, according to Michał Braun, generally do not speak English very well.

To realise this ideal approach, resources and public funding are necessary and success factors in themselves. This also includes awareness of already-existing funding possibilities.

6 Problems for Reaching all Young People

In their work with youth and EU projects, the Regional Volunteer Centre in Kielce identified several problems, including budget, accessibility of information, reluctance of teachers to cooperate, and an imbalance in youth participation.

Regarding the action programme of the European Youth Week, with its different debates and events for young people, the budget was rather low. The centre got a sum of 9180 euros to implement the project. The coordinator was not a volunteer and got paid for it, but as previously mentioned, there were also many volunteers involved in the project. The EU funding was more like an assignment to organise projects. Money was invested for training rooms, catering, workshops for young people, and hiring trainers. Furthermore, material and office supplies were bought, like a tent for outdoor activities, paper, pens, and copywriters. All in all, there was enough money to pay the trainers and for some advertisements, as well as to cover the costs of training rooms, but not enough to cover structural costs to ensure the basic infrastructure and staff needed to uphold the organisation. At the same time, the funders are described as being quite open and up to date with the issues that are funded. Erasmus+ is regarded as less bureaucratic and easier to manage than previous funding schemes.

Another problem already mentioned is that single projects are not capable of promoting themselves, and actors who just start to engage in EU issues lack information about funding possibilities. Even though Erasmus+ offers a lot of different programmes for young people and the EU is generally interested in the opinion of the organisers, access to EU funding is complicated and, therefore, difficult to reach for young people, which is especially relevant for this target group. According to the centre, an overarching aim should be that the EU improves its approaches to reaching out to more young people. If there were a possibility to change something about the Erasmus+ programme, it would be to provide more resources for promoting it, because many young people are not aware of their possibilities in the EU. The European Commission should invest in paid advertising on the internet, TV spots, or more presence on social media, for example, YouTube advertising, which is not that expensive. At the same time, members of the organisation are housed in expensive hotels during projects funded by the EU. The centre would prefer to get housed in cheaper hotels and use this money to promote the programme instead. Programme-related websites should be more colourful, with more pictures and very simple instructions.

The organisation additionally suggests paid employees for the Eurodesk. The Eurodesk, as mentioned, is the main European information network, but it is based on voluntary work. The organisation is supposed to deliver twenty hours of consultancy per week, but it does not have any money to hire somebody only for that task.

Furthermore, one problem is that organisations have to cooperate with schools, and often the teachers do not advocate the involvement of their students as they do not see the advantages. Due to the generational gap between teachers and students, many teachers also do not know about the possibilities of EU projects. According to the interviewed project leader, there is also a latent clash between the equal-partner approach to young people used by the centre and the “teacher approach”. While the centre’s project aim was to listen to and empower young people, teachers often think that they know best what is suitable for young people. Most young people enjoy working with the organisation, and teachers might fear a delegitimisation of their own approach.

Another more general and practical problem is that the same group of young people is involved in many projects, while the biggest group of young people is not involved in any project. It is difficult to find those who are not yet active and to convince them to get involved.

7 Conclusion and Outlook. European Values Are Essential

The organisation’s commitment to European issues and youth work has not ended with the end of the project. It expects to grow in the next 10 years, employing more staff and volunteers and carrying out new projects. It especially wants to reach out to more young people, and it wants every young person to know about the programme, so that they can travel and meet other people as an overarching aim.

According to the organisers, the lasting effects of the project are people who are more open-minded, more mobile, more tolerant, and more respectful and who are more likely to engage in their local communities. To improve the long-term effect of the EU projects for young people, the organisation considers it particularly important to reach out to more people, which is actually the main problem.

As the organisation underlines, people interested in EU youth work should approach experienced players. They are happy to share their knowledge with others. Besides, it is important to get engaged in one of the NGOs to have a permanent organisational basis. Planning and realising projects can be very complex; they require experience and take time to learn. But according to the centre, the work with young people in the EU is very interesting and rewarding.