STEP blog

Europe’s future depends on its youth. Promoting youth participation is fundamental in the EU policy. Especially for environmental issues, the participation of young people in decision making is extremely important, as decisions taken now on matters such as climate change, the depletion of resources, and the loss of biodiversity will have long-term consequences that will affect the future generations. Young people will have to live longer with the consequences of current decisions, and have special concerns and responsibilities in relation to the environment.[1]

The STEP project addresses young people across Europe to increase their participation in decision-making procedures and collaborating with others, in order to bring about awareness and positive responses to environmentally-related issues. One way of doing so is by engaging young people in online dialogues on the step.green platform. The first dialogue launched at a European level focused on the topic of UN's 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), which define the main topics and priorities that the world should focus on until 2030 (you can find out more about the SDGs here).

Read more ...

Voxe.org is a French platform that aims to provide information and tools in order to help young people to get involved in public life. Voxe team accepted to answer some questions about their work, and about the future they see in youth participation.

What is Voxe.org and how does it work?

Voxe: Voxe.org is a media that allows young people (18-25 years-old) to get better information, for a better involvement. Voxe.org renders accessible the issues of today’s world.

Read more ...

E-PETITION, QUALITATIVE AND QUANTITATIVE CHANGES

Collecting signatures is, for instance, a traditional way of drawing public opinion and institutions` attention on a particular issue: in some case, people sign a petition to call for a referendum, that is to turn an unofficial act into an official one. In a world without ICT, activists would set stands in a public place, most probably in a crowded square, would stop people explaining them the reasons why it`s important to care about the issue, would distribute flyers and leaflets with the goal of collecting as many signatures as possible.

Read more ...

With information and communication development (ICT) we generally intend any product which enables users to store, transmit, access and even manipulate information. The development of ICT has, during the last years, revolutionized our way of living: at the individual level, think about the way we communicate with friends, plan our holidays or apply for a job. And going wider and deeper, consider how national bureaucracies, state education systems or media have been affected by the introduction of ICT.

Read more ...