YOU ACT! Youth academy of citizenship (2011 February – November)

The Youth Academy of Active Citizenship was a complex project, where young people from Lithuania and Romania gathered together and participated in an interdisciplinary, creative training on active citizenship at a grassroots level with a focus, inter alia, on social justice, building youth social skills and competences, practicing your rights via civil actions, constructing dialogue with local authorities, contributing to the fight against social exclusion and inequality. The trainings aims were to empower young people to identify their needs and to turn their goals into actions. In order to promote youth solidarity, project participants were asked to organize a public action back in their home cities.

Lithuanian Youth Center members decided to organize action "I have emigrated because of the silence ..." wich aim to stop emigration by involving young people to improve the education system of Lithuania.

Center volunteers made informational posters and published them at bus stops and major university bulletin boards. Posters invited youth not to repeat others' mistakes, to not to be afraid to take the initiative to point out the education systems errors, to change the current situation by drawing public attention to the main problems.

Public actions were followed by a closing event of the project – presentation of a movie connected with education system reform.

Youth Democracy Project “YOU ACT” was supported by the EU program "Youth in Action”.  The initiator of the project is “DEMOS. Critical Thought Institute“.