YOUNG STONES - innovate together to develop ideas and strategies for new civic engagement public policies

ended

The project YOUNG STONES aims at strengthening the newborn existing cooperation with the city of Unterammergau by addressing the common challenge of civic engagement and participation in particular regarding young people and women. The municipalities of Unterammergau and Pradalunga share a common tradition and history about the production and trade of sharpening whetstones and discovering this common historical memory is an important character of this twinning. The name of this project is thus based on this common historical tradition; it is as a successful union between the stones of the past and the new generations, as milestones of a good working community. More specifically, the project intends to increase people's awareness about the always increasing need of defining civic participation policies and their direct involvement in designing and implementing them. To this end, the project is based on a series of events that are mutually reinforcing and which include the participation of different categories of stakeholders: citizens, public institutions, civil society associations and experts. The project objectives are thus the subsequent: deepening the cooperation of two communities that can support each other and innovate together, fostering public policies contributing to a new narrative for Europe, promoting the involvement of citizens in the definition of the latter. The project’s contributes concretely to the priorities of the call by reflecting, with the local communities of the two countries, on some events that have involved Europe (in particular Covid-19), by promoting cultural and linguistic exchanges and by finding common solutions to common problems, building a common roadmap of key priorities and good practices. The work plan is thus designed to keep a regular flow of activities that allow cities to meet and share experiences and ideas on civic engagement and participation and to deveolp proposals about public policies implementation.