The overall aim of the project “Better Parliaments – Stronger Democracies” is to improve capacity and opportunities of youth and youth nongovernmental organizations all over Bosnia and Herzegovina. By impacting the parliamentary processes that deal with specific youth issues, the project will contribute towards the transparency and integrity of the state and entity parliaments, as it was imagined by the Institute Perpetuum Mobile.
This program consists of youth from 10 different towns/municipalities, 10 youth centers/organizations, new knowledge about the political system, and the youth participation in democratic processes.
Four organizations have engaged 20 peer educators who have been trained to organize and conduct workshops on topics of better understanding of democratic processes, and active citizen’s participation. In each town/municipality 4 workshops have been conducted that gathered two groups of 20 young individuals. One of the tools for the training is the guide “ACTIVATE” created through this project during November and December 2015.
The phase following the training is very interesting and useful for the participants as it involves study visits to entity and state parliaments. In the direct contact with decision makers youth who have completed the workshops have opportunities to use the gained knowledge in an active debate about youth issues, primarily dealing with youth unemployment.
This project is supported by the Royal Netherlands Embassy in Sarajevo through MATRA program until the end of 2017.
“The spirit of democracy cannot be imposed from the outside. It has to grow from within the society.”