LAYOUTH

LAYOUTH comes from Local Action for Youth. But it is also the combination of LAYOUT and YOUTH. Not the
least, it also aims a call towards YOU with the middle letters of the newly created word.
The project involves 8 cities which were nominated as European Youth Capital title bearers in time: Braga in
2012, Maribor in 2013, Thessaloniki in 2014, Cluj-Napoca in 2015, Varna in 2017, Novi Sad in 2019, Amiens in
2020 and Klaipeda in 2021.

All participating cities have their own realities. Their approach towards youth-related strategic and operational
planning and ecosystem-development through cross-sectorial cooperation (public, non-governmental and
private) is absolutely diversified. However, cooperation is possible between these cities as there is common
ground regarding the importance given to young people, their engagement, connection and empowerment
as active citizens of their city’s life, and there are mutually accepted principles like co-management of strategic
initiatives between the municipality and youth actors.

We will change the approach on how cities should deliver for young people in a simple yet well- structured
way. At least we will try. We believe LAYOUTH will become a brand and reference point on how to work for
and with young people through action planning and integrated efforts of cooperation in a participatory and
inclusive way. We believe these 8 cities, through their record up to this moment and their strong commitment
towards youth will really be able to ignite this innovation.

The main goal of the project is to consolidate the local planning and implementation systems serving
youth in participating cities, aligned with European youth-related policies while setting a standard and
a wide pool of intellectual resources through which any other European city can align its own local
efforts towards young generation.

We defined the following specific objectives for our endeavour:

SO1: to create a modern, modular, complex but still easily adaptable framework and scalable model of
delivering full cycles of urban youth ecosystem development built on sustainable approaches;
SO2: to improve the actual youth-related planning and delivery system of participating cities on strategic and
operational level putting high emphasis on engagement, connection and empowerment of young people;
SO3: to engage and to empower key organisational and organisational actors in a learning process through
which their capacity of a cooperation, co-creation and co-management based local action planning and
delivering in the field of youth becomes sustainable while adding significantly to the quality of life of young
citizens;
OD (organizational development): to develop the capacity of involved partners in being key actors of the
future development of youth ecosystems in their own cities and to assist other cities in addressing the same
issue.

… IN KEY NUMBERS …

• 1 modern, modular framework in 9 European languages, available open source for scaling and
multiplication, enhanced by online tools and professional expertise,
• 1 new brand for local action planning and delivery for youth in cities of Europe: LAYOUTH,
• 5 key elements of a framework for urban action planning for youth in Europe (white paper – toolkit –
study cases on implemented action plans – pool of facilitators – resource centre),
• 8 implemented Local Action Plans for Youth in 8 cities from 8 countries, which are harmonised by
methodology. All of them evaluated through study cases.
• 25 tools of empowering young people at local level collected in a single toolkit,
• 32 youth facilitators organised in a European network which can be deployed in an international
environment in order to provide further scaling,
• 7,680 stakeholders consulted in the process,
• 24,000 young people consulted about their feelings about the city and their needs and contributions
to their city’s life and development,
• 3,000+ European level stakeholders targeted by dissemination activities and publications,
• 1.5 million euro allocated for youth programmes and initiatives in 2020 in participating cities,
• 7.8 million euro allocated local budgets in partner cities for youth related investments for 2020 and
2021

The project will result in the creation of a new, modern, modular, and scalable model for delivering local
action plans for youth. All characteristics are carefully considered here. Modern, as something easy to
understand and to apply in practice, something to which youth organisations, groups of young people can
relate to easily. Modular as something which has the quality of being understood piece by piece. Adaptable
as a framework which can be easily filled with local specific content while the framework itself keeps intact.
And scalable as being able to be extended to an unlimited number of cities, a characteristic derived also from
its adaptability.

The project is built on:
• 3 intellectual outputs
• 3 multiplier events
• 3 training activities
• 8 project meetings
• 8 partner/8 country cooperation

THE CORE RESULT – A MODERN, MODULAR, ADAPTABLE AND SCALABLE MODEL

Why action plans and not strategies? Because we consider that cities need new ways of approaching
challenges on short term, too. Medium-term planning is vital and there are accepted methodologies for
deploying them, but short-term planning and implementation sometimes lacks methods and tools albeit a
yearly planning seems an easy thing to be done in the youth field. We consider there are no real practices on
this. This is why we propose LAYOUTH.

PARTICIPATION THROUGH THIS PROJECT

As second layer of results, the project will generate a transnational interaction of more than 24,000 young
people through direct interaction at local level, but also with stakeholders, with decision makers from local,
national and European level. The total estimated direct reach of the project will go beyond 30,000 people
while the project will have an impact on approximately 1,2 million children and young people (out of the
approximately 2,7 million inhabitants of the 8 cities.

LOCAL PROCESSES AND PLANS

The project’s third layer of results will be felt on local level. Through the second intellectual output, a set of
local plans for youth will be created based on the methodology created in the project. These processes,
although different in concepts, priorities, will be built on the same methodology. The fourth intellectual
output will also contain an improvement and a second round of action plans based on the version’s
experience in the full delivery cycle (planning, implementation, monitoring and at least intermediate
evaluation).

But these local plans will create much more. They will create engagement and will connect communities, will
empower young people and will create trust. The connection between the youth sector, young people, youth
workers and the local public authorities (City Halls) will also become stronger, and this project will provide a
stronger commitment of all interested parties towards these kinds of participatory processes.

EUROPEAN POOL OF FACILITATORS

The project will also provide a network of 32 youth workers, 4 from each participating city, facilitators of the
work with young people in consultation and implementation mechanisms. Their special skills and expertise
will be useful in assisting young people in critical thinking towards their urban surroundings, but also the
creative thinking regarding new ideas about how their and their surroundings’ condition can be improved.

THE EUROPEAN CENTRE FOR YOUTH PARTICIPATION, ENHANCED WITH LAYOUTH

This centre was an original concept developed in 2017 and a commitment from all participating cities involved
in the Com’ON Europe strategic project as one of the key deliveries of that project. Citizen Y will be officially
launched on 20 June 2019 in Cluj-Napoca.

LAYOUTH will add another element to the expertise of the Centre. But, viewed from another angle, the Centre
delivers a key factor of sustainability.