

The many political crises in Europe highlights the need for a strong and dynamic democracy in which the voice of everyone is expressed, heard and respected. Whenever election time comes in European countries, many feel powerless to change anything and do not realise the potential for change that they hold when casting their vote. Young people especially are disconnected from traditional political parties and politicians and there is a certain degree of defiance and distrust that leads to low turn out at voting sites. the predominant choice of first time voters, young people over 18, is abstentionism. Though there is a little higher interest when it comes to local and presidential elections, young people lack understanding when it comes to the importance of electing regional or European representatives. But that does not mean that young people are not interested in politics. In fact, most of them do have an elaborate political opinion about the organisation of our societies but the results of their disengagement from civic life is that, radical political discourse is more frequently heard and does not encounter a strong opposition. As a result, more extreme and nationalist ideas creeps in the public place when extremist are elected by a minority of active voters who are educated to the power of voting and are encouraged to take to the urns. Because of this phenomenon, society gets polarized more and more, which in turn create more and more discrimination and inequality that can unfortunately lead to violence.

Yet, young people are often the driver of positive political change in society as we see with the push for environmental accountability of countries by young people all over Europe. Countless social reforms have been made as a result of students protests. But more often than not, the activism of young people politically engaged does not really translate into action on the official electoral scene.
Our project propose to create and disseminate modern educational tools that can reach both politically engaged young people in order show them the value of participating in the democratic process of elections and also reach young people excluded from civic life for whatever reason and give them the knowledge and understanding they need to participate in elections.

Making young people understand such complex concepts is a challenge, but we believe that it can be tackled by the using the method of gamification: Using a playful approach to teaching is attractive to young people and facilitate the involvement of all, regardless of the social status.
Youth workers are on the front line of popular education and are the ones able to influence young people’s behaviours, so the project is designed to help them to better understand youngster’s point of view on voting and to provide them with tools helping them to design quality educational programs about the importance of voting.

Young people between 16 and 29 years old are the ultimate beneficiaries of our project. We include them in all phases: initial research, creation of the educational tools, use and evaluation of the project results and dissemination.
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