Com’ON City was the most voted innovative digital participation proposal during the Young People Hackathon in Greece.
This activity is a result of a process that began about a month before its implementation.
The consortium agreed on a strategic plan to promote the activity and maximize the impact of the project. For that reason on 29th of May 2023 after a partners meeting the partners agreed on the launch of an online campaign through mainly social media in order to involve the network of partners in highlighting the already existing digital tools.
This campaign lasted around 3 weeks and involved 369 participants who vote for the tools that they believe can be implemented on the European Level.
The 3 tools that got the most votes were the topic of work on the days of the Young People Hackathon.
• Com’ON City- PONT Group, Romania
• VR Application- Greece
• Youth Thematic Years -Romania
The first day of the Event included mainly speeches from experts, discussion panels, and presentations of the Partner Countries’ tools.
And on the second day, the participants worked on how the 3 chosen tools can adapt in order to tackle the specific local needs of the partner countries.
At first interactive team-building activities took place to foster a better team spirit for the two Hackathon Sessions that followed. In these sessions, the participants were divided into three groups, each examining a digital participatory tool: Com’ ON City, VR Application, and Youth Thematic Years. In the first session, the participants were tasked with identifying the needs covered by the tool in each partner country, defining the common target audience, and suggesting necessary actions or changes to ensure the tool’s sustainability over time. In the second session, after completing the first task, the groups conducted a SWOT analysis, considering the tools’ implementation in all partner countries. Finally, each group presented the results of the two sessions, which yielded particularly interesting outcomes.
The results of the event will be included in the handbook produced at the end of the D.C.P v2.0 project, which encompasses material from the entire implementation process.
DCP v2.0 aims at innovating the civic education process resulting in increased participation of young people in their communities. As part of this innovation, a user-friendly manual will be developed, which will gather and present a collection of known e-participation tools, with practical examples to enhance civic participation. In conclusion, the project attempts to assess whether investing in digital tools to enhance participation during COVID-19 is appropriate. One consideration is whether their use, post-pandemic, will maintain or extend audience participation. Additionally, activities that increase participants’ access to and interaction with planning processes, and the knowledge and data they provide, might also have positive long-term impacts on other stakeholders, such as local communities. However, we need to keep in mind that digital technologies are not neutral and should not be used blindly. As a part of the participation palette, however, they can potentially help projects to reach a larger number of stakeholders.
If you want to know more about the project, click here.
DCP v2.0 is funded by the European Union through Citizens, Equality, Rights and Values Programme (CERV).