In September, as part of the Erasmus+ project ACTIon, nexus organized an ACTIon multiplier event for Germany in the form of an Online Dialogue Forum on the topic of “Digital Youth Participation and Active Citizenship”. The event was intended for interested secondary school teachers, individuals working with young people in non-school contexts, and multipliers.

During the event, there was an initial presentation about the ACTIon project and the training programme “DigiPAC” (Digital Participation and Active Citizenship), as well as a component in which practical experiences from the perspective of the project team and the evaluator were shared. Additionally, our cooperation partner, LiquidDemocracy, introduced the digital participation tool Adhocracy+, which is designed to replace OPIN and will also be made available for young people and their participation initiatives.

Following this, there was a lively exchange among the participants. In total, 10 individuals from various stakeholder groups in the fields of education and youth participation, including representatives from the German Youth Institute, the Ministry of Justice in Saxony, the Youth Participation Service Center, Berlin State Students’ Committee, the municipal job center in Offenbach (Pro Arbeit), and the Agency for Citizen Participation took part. As such, the Dialogue Forum included representatives from the fields of education, research, process support for participatory design, youth work, youth policy consulting and youth participation. Two of the participating organizations are active nationwide, and the others represented six other federal states in addition to Berlin.

In a quick round of feedback at the end of the Dialogue Forum, participants gave the following responses to the question “What do you take away?”: “Got to know new tools”; “ideas for my own project, more opportunities for participation, potential partners for new European projects, 2 training programs”; “networking with like-minded people”; ” impulses and “something good” that you would like to tell others”.