By ALDA – European Association for Local Democracy
From March 1-3 2023, ALDA participated in the Civil Society Days in Brussels, engaging other CSOs and contributing to a civic space with Europe focused on the new digital age.
Digital participation and digital rights in the European public space: a focus on youth at the workshop. In this event, ALDA’s Project Manager, Dafne Sgarra, coordinating and representing the Thematic Hub for Youth Education and Empowerment, demonstrated the Association’s contribution to youth empowerment. This provided us with an opportunity to present and promote the P-CUBE project, which we developed as part of our Youth Empowerment and Education Thematic Hub. This project aims to provide youngsters with a better understanding of how decisions in the public sphere are made by covering aspects of policymaking.
In a second workshop, organised with the Union of European Federalists (UEF), CSOs sought to bring the EU debate outside EU capitals. This topic seems extremely important today due to citizens’ growing distrust of politicians and democratic institutions. Our goal at ALDA was to present recommendations for engaging people constructively and coordinating efforts to make the upcoming EP elections an opportunity for stimulating civic space and EU values debates.
The Civil Society Days 2023 provided an important opportunity to exchange knowledge and discuss potential collaborations in the future!