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More and more decision makers, municipalities, youth organizations, youth workers and other practitioners in Europe get involved in the topic of e-Participation. They experiment with new tools and services and gain increasing practical experience in the field. This is extremely valuable. But still, although progress is being made, the activities and pioneer projects taking place in Europe are yet rather fragmented and disconnected. Many experienced practitioners in the youth field don´t know about each other, software developers in different countries develop the same kind of tools over and over again, and many user organizations make the same experiences – but also repeat the same mistakes. In this context, the establishment of a regular European-wide exchange between youth workers, participation experts, software developers and other actors in the field is of great mutual benefit. With the #BePart Summit, we aimed to gradually establish such an exchange. Within a 3-day seminar 50 European youth workers from 18 participating organisations in 10 different countries obtained the possibility to share good practices and experiences on e-participation with other experts and practitioners, identifying the challenges and opportunities as well as needs for training and qualification. Participants came from Non-governmental organisations/associations/social enterprises (7), Local Public bodies (2), National Youth Councils (2), Small and medium sized enterprise (2), National Public body (1), Civil Society Organisation (1), European NGO (1), Other(2).The participants have discussed and come to the conclusion that e-participation is a tool for interactive decision making online. Through it a wider range of people, mainly the younger people, can be reached and engaged in giving their opinion on topics that influence their lives. On the subject of what need is it a response they concluded that through its usage the state or the European Union can manage and use its resources and finances more efficiently, further drawing attention to the fact that the offline processes, currently managed by the EU, are more costly. They think that adapting such new ideas and methods of connecting with one another such as the e-participation is an innovative and evolutionary step in itself. The e-participation can be used as a tool to solve the problem with the lack of communication, especially in the younger community within EU, as it serves as a means to reaching each other easily online even to people living in more remote areas. It gives the opportunity to address issues, which young people face, not only on a local but on a global level as well. It is the ideal method for turning youth’s thoughts and opinions into actual involvement.
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