#participare civică

How Ungheni treats young people as partners at the table of decisions: councils, forums and a fund of their own

Ungheni does a lot for young people — and that is good. But a focus group hosted on 16 August by the District Youth Centre brought to light something rarer: the district calls its young people to the table of decisions too, not just to events. Behind it lies an infrastructure built up over time — a Youth Council with 35 members, drawn from at least half of the district's localities, forums, a co-participation conference with the mayors — and a centre that does not wait for young people but goes after them, all the way to the village. What is more, between 2016 and 2017, young people had a fund of their own, run by themselves — in a district where the number of young people has almost halved in a decade.