STEP blog

Campaigner and project coordinator Youth at Plastic Soup Foundation

How do you, as an individual, participate in the life of your community?

I work as a campaigner for the Plastic Soup Foundation so everyday I am staying up to date of all events and things happening around plastic pollution. I sign most petitions of which I believe can create change and support sustainable lifestyles. I talk about it with my friends and family and try to get them involved in using less plastic.

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EU28 poll shows that only 46% of youth are voting on the local level and even less on national (43%) and regional (37%). For example, only 34% of young people in the UK voted in the EU referendum. Most common reasons for “not voting” are: youth people think they can’t make a change with their votes; they are not sufficiently informed to vote or the purpose of voting doesn’t address their daily problem; sometimes they just don’t bother themselves with it. Recent evidences show that young people from 18 to 24 are not active in voting but still remain highly engaged in politics, though. How is that possible? Although voting is a direct form of participation and remains one of the most essential one, there are several alternative ways to participate and to be heard. You probably already know some of them:

- Signing the petitions;
- Protests and demonstrations;
- Participation 2.0 (online petitions, awareness-raising campaigns and so on).
Even symbolic non-participation can be recognised as participation (for example, calls to leave ballots blank, which were quite popular in several countries).

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Members of Let's do it Macedonia (Ajde Makedonija).

Igor and Blazhe are organising activities for waste management in the country and do other voluntary work.

How do you, as an individual, participate in the life of your community?

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The STEP project is supported by the work of many – and the technical partners play an important role in it. They are creating the e-participation platform that young people will be soon using to share ideas and discuss possible solutions for environmental issues.

So if you want to learn more about some of the online features of STEP, this article might be a good place to start.

The STEP Platform in a nutshell

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