Innovative youth involvement 3.0 — Building green smart cities with digital generation
On 11th of September 2024, in Brussels (Belgium) Out of the Box international hosted the event: Innovative youth participation 3.0 / BUILDING GREEN SMART CITIES WITH DIGITAL GENERATION, where the United for a Green Europe project (UxGE) was presented and further explored the project topic in a Kafana debate format. At the event, participants reflected on how important youth involvement is in the conversation regarding the digital and green agenda, and how these priorities areas are intertwined to support sustainable cities with the goal of building a better future in Europe.
The discussion was concealed in spirit of the European Week of Regions and Cities 2024 as it provides the perfect background and foundation to support the local and regional communities to further sustainable development of our European regions. The event successfully gathered 25 active participants.
This opportunity was leveraged to present the work done in UxGE project. An overview was provided involving the objectives, activities and expected impact of the project. In addition, the online training course was introduced, briefly piloted and cherished by the participants. These projects outputs were shown as innovative ways to encourage young people to become community challengers. An open debate was the major activity of the session. This initiative was organised under efforts to engage diverse stakeholders in Brussels to debate about role of young people to actively engage in local and regional communities to build better future for everyone, and the discussion was triggered on how digital and green proposals can help to build more sustainable cities.
Main takeaways of the event concern the difficulty to verify the reliability of information; participants’ perception on how European individuals bear the main burden in relation to sustainability, instead of larger industries; and finally, the suggestion on EU next steps towards minimise the dependency on countries which represent the most significant environmental impact worldwide, meaning reducing dependency from China, USA and India.
Finally, participants acknowledged that it is crucial to develop key competencies in young people who are willing to become youth leaders; activities like this one (the multiplier event) are necessary to promote active participation of young people in democratic life and in society; and ultimately, the work done by civil society organisations (CSOs) is highly important to pave the way to conquer greater, greener and more inclusive democracies.