Rethinking democracy: first YouthUp workshop held in Tallinn, Estonia

The first YouthUp workshop, focusing on how politics can actively engage young people, took place in Tallinn, Estonia, last week. One of the European Youth Forum’s member organisations, the Estonian National Youth Council (ENL), held the workshop on 10th September 2015 as a part of its event promoting youth participation. Earlier this year, Estonia lowered the voting age to 16 for all local elections, after the ENL had been lobbying for a lower voting age since 2007.

During the workshop, participants discussed how implementing mandatory citizenship education in schools would encourage higher rates of turnout for the new voters. Often, young people do not turn out to vote because of the feeling that their single vote does not effect real change. Participants talked about measures to counteract that feeling by increasing the direct role of citizens in the decision-making process. The workshop also covered how digital technologies like online voting could further engage young people in the democratic process.

YouthUp, an open-source campaign powered by the Youth Forum and the League of Young Voters, is working toward creating a more youth-inclusive politics. Workshops are being held across Europe, asking young people, activists and experts one key question: how can politics "youth up"? What changes can be made to make politics more inclusive, and how can young people advocate to make them a reality?

YouthUp will provide resources to young people to use in their own countries. For example, it will soon produce a toolkit, that will be available on the campaign’s website, so that young people can run their own workshops and feed in their results, co-creating the campaign. The ideas generated will be uploaded to the campaign’s website for others to vote on. Starting next year, they will then be presented to high-level European policymakers.