The involvement of young people in developing youth policies and in decision making is fundamental to increase the sense of belonging and active citizenship of young people to their communities. This calls municipalities and regional public authorities to address the needs and interests of youth, to engage youth as actors of the solutions for their problems, to increase the level of their ownership of and responsibility for their own community and thus to develop the quality of local democracy. We believe that young people if adequately informed, trained, empowered and entrusted they will be the best actors of change and promoters of democracy, rule of law and equality. 

Democracy Relaoding is a program of Erasmus+ Youth national agencies since 2015 that was established as strategic approach of working with local and regional public authorities in planning, developing, maintaining and reforming democratic youth participation structures for dialogue, co-decision and co-management. Based on the lessons learned during the activities of last 5 years a reference model designed out of the competences required for municipalities for engaging youth in decision-making and an online Toolkit as developed to support the development of these competences. This Toolkit is the basis of a long term strategic development plan to address municipalities through the Erasmus + Youth program. It is designed to help youth policy related municipality staff  to become empowered, competent and ready to engage young people into decision making and thus improving active citizenship and democracy in local communities.

From 1st March 2021 the Toolkit will be available here: www.democracy-reloading.eu 

This training course will aim to train adequate number of multipliers (trainers, consultants, experts) who will be able to support the implementation of the national activities in coherence with Europe Goes Local objectives and also help municipality officers (and their local allies) who work with youth policies, structures and programs engaging young people in municipal decision making by using the online Toolkit. 

This Module will include two online activities and a training seminar in Italy as follows:

• 22nd March 2021 14:00-15:30 CET - 1st online activity


• 17th May 2021 14:00-15:30 CET - 2nd online activity


• 28th June - 2nd July 2021 - training course in Vinci (Empoli, near Florence), Italy

The specific objectives of the training process:

• to understand the content and the functions of the Democracy Reloading online Toolkit,


• to identify approaches how Democracy Reloading and Europe Goes Local  tools can support municipality officers and youth participation in decision-making,


• to share and collect good practices how Erasmus + Youth projects can support municipalities in developing youth participation in decision-making,


• to contribute to the development of national plans in promoting and integrating the online Toolkit,