At first, shyness is notorious, but soon the tongues loosen up and the exchange of ideas begins. Young people from several European countries were in Vila Real de Santo António to participate in the XNUMXst International Meeting of Citizenship and Youth Participation in the Algarve.
In addition to participating in various work initiatives, but also recreational, they contributed to the International conference "Local Power and Participatory Democracy in Times of Change", one of the highlights of the meeting promoted by the cooperative ECOS that took place on 20 June.
An event that brought together academics, local authorities and associations, entities and specialists in participatory democracy from different countries in Europe. After a morning of two round tables, which were based on a more traditional model, in the afternoon the participants in the meeting were called to be the protagonists.
Using the Participative Café model, or “World Café”, the ECOS-Cooperative of Education, Cooperation and Development put young people to think and discuss about four general themes, where one or more promoters tried to stimulate the exchange of ideas.
O Sul Informação and Rádio Universitária do Algarve were the guests at the table dedicated to the theme “Media and E-Democracy”, where the difference in perceptions about Social Communication and social networks, depending on the country of origin, was quite notorious.
The presence of a Turkish citizen at the table allowed, moreover, an internal view of the protests that shook this country, where, according to the participant from Turkey, the local media have aligned with the Government in an attempt not to publicize the protests .
Here, the importance of social networks in the dissemination of information that was being “suppressed” was highlighted, which led to the conclusion that, increasingly, “the use of E-Democracy in social networks ends up forcing traditional media to focus on certain themes', even when there is reluctance to do so.
At other tables, but with common participants (groups of participants in the conference were asked to rotate through three of the four debate zones, over an hour), the themes «Local Agenda XXI», «Youth Participatory Budget» and «Municipal Youth Councils».
Parallel to this initiative, the partners of «Algarve 2020» were gathered to take stock of this initiative of citizenship and youth participation. This Wednesday, the president of ECOS Bruno António returns to the radio program «Impressions» to take stock of the meeting and the meeting that the cooperative he directs held last week.
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