Day 2: Wait, Are We Actually Participating or Just Being Included? 🤔

We started the day by trying to remember everyone's names through a game with a blanket. Sounds simple? Yeah, no. 😂 Two people would sit on opposite sides, the blanket dropped, and whoever shouted the other person's name first won. After that slightly chaotic start, we moved into something much more serious: what does youth participation actually mean?

During World Café, we explored four topics connected to participation, empowerment, stakeholders, inclusion and civic engagement. We moved between tables, read what previous groups had written and added our own thoughts. At first, some words sounded quite formal, especially things like stakeholders and policy. But once we started discussing real examples, they made much more sense. We also noticed that people from different countries sometimes understood participation differently. And that was kind of the point, right? We weren't there to memorise one definition but to figure out what these ideas mean in real life.

Later, we wrote down examples of our own experiences with participation. Then we learned about Roger Hart's Participation Ladder and had to decide where those experiences belonged. This was honestly one of the most thought-provoking parts of the day. Because think about it: if young people attend an event but have absolutely no influence over what happens, is that really participation? We discussed examples where the answer wasn't obvious, and sometimes people disagreed. It made us realise that being invited somewhere doesn't automatically mean having a voice.

And then, completely different challenge: building a tower out of spaghetti, tape, string and a marshmallow. 🍝 We had 40 minutes, and suddenly everyone became an engineer with a different plan. The biggest lesson? A good idea is useless if the group cannot agree on how to test it. We also started preparing presentations about participation in our countries and finished with Polish culture night.

So yeah, we learned about participation, but also practised it. Having an opinion, explaining it, listening to others and making decisions together. Turns out these things are connected more than we expected.

~Reporting Group 2