Enhancing Local Readiness for Co-creating with Youth

Enhancing Local Readiness for Co-creating with Youth (ReCoCreaYOUTH) is an international project with 8 partners coordinated by KAU under the lead of dr. Inga Narbutaite Aflaki, Senior Lector in Political Science. The project aims to explore the work of local governments with democratic participatry methods directed at broader groups of youth so as to enhance the relevance of their services and create public value on local topics of joint concern.

The project targets participating municipalities and assists them in organising participatory pilots with various groups of youth with the aim to enhance local readiness to co-create public value with young residents. This aim is achieved by testing new methods, tools and platforms for more direct, dialogue-based and inclusive youth participation, piloting them with youth.

The project consortium is build up after a tripple helix  idea, that is as a constellation of researchers, municipal profesionals and NGOs – all active in democratic participatory methods and with the aim of learning by sharing various forms of knowledge – theoretical, practical and methodological.

It draws together 3 universities (Karlstad University, Åbo Akademi University and Tallinn University), 6 municipalities (3 as ordinary partners  -  Alvesta in Sweden, Vaasa and Nykarleby in Finland and 3 more in Estonia as participants – Viljandi, Kuusalu and Võru ) as well as 2 NGOs. (Coompanion Kronoberg, Sweden and GTL lab in Estonia).

The project is ungoing from 1 january 2024 for 33 months until september 2026 and is financed by European Comission Erasmus+ KA220 program, Cooperation Partnerships in Youth. The total budget is ca 4 mln SEK (400 000 EUR).

The planned outputs of the project will include:

  1. Actively reaching out to and engaging target groups of youth in five local pilots of co-creation processes mediated through contextually new co-creation tools and an evaluation of their implementation.
  2. Guidelines for other (mid-size and smaller) municipalities and NGOs that face similar challenges but lack knowledge of co-creation to facilitate democratic changes and innovations and youth empowerment.
  3. Multiplier events and training sessions where the compiled set of co-creation tools will be disseminated.

 

 

Contact details:

Project Leader: dr Inga Narbutaité Aflaki: inganarb@kau.se; + 46 (0)733018950

Project researcher: dr Magnus Lindh – magnus.lindh@kau.se.