"<< Background >>Today’s youth are the future of the world, many governments and international Youth Organizations are increasingly interested in young citizens. It shows that youth can have a huge impact on the development of a society, new policies in different countries, and the development of the program by promoting youth development and youth participation as a promising approach to development.The countries experience growing economies, expanding civil societies, and political transitions, they have an important opportunity to use the energy of young people to greatly advance social, economic and human development. Nevertheless, in order to collect this “demographic dividend”, young people must be equipped with human and social capital skills and abilities to become responsible and productive citizens. Interest in youth civil participation is growing as an important part of youth development, enabling young people to acquire the human and social capital they need to transition to adulthood and contribute to national development.Nowadays, our societies face lack of active citizenship. Which will have negative effect on the country development. The civil participation of young people in the communities they live in is increasingly recognized as a component of youth development in general. These young people can build humanitarian and social capital by training on civil rights and responsibilities as an active citizens. This energy and hopes of young people are an important life phase for the creation of human capital, which allows them to escape from poverty and lead better and more fulfilling lives. Whether at skill levels, health, civil or social involvement, human capital in youth is an important determinant of long-term growth.’Civil and Democratic Participation defines the need to “adopt civil learning and democratic participation as an undisputed non-formal education priority for all social work” and will make a call for civil society participation, democratic participation and voluntary community services, and it will advance the wave of learning and active citizenship. In this way, we aim to open new ways to mobilize civil participation by working with project partners, youth workers, youth and local community partners.Nowadays, in our society, there is a big necessity for youth active citizenship. Civic participation is very important and it has the potential to help local communities, young people and different target groups, develop their capacity to understand their roles in the complex social, economic and political system. While the youth may find the seriousness of contemporary issues difficult, they will be able to learn through common learning approaches that change life by successfully affecting change through civic engagement. Partner organizations that advance civilian linkages as interdependent forms of learning will increase the knowledge, skills and motivations of target groups, leading to academic and social success.<< Objectives >>The project aims to support efforts to achieve civil society participation across institutions and governments, as an integral part of the communities in which young people live as active citizens. Our project, together with all the partner organizations involved in the project, will help create a permanent and structured dialogue that allows the views of young people and citizens to receive information about direct decision making and public policy. This local democratic renewal needs a European level of awareness, starting from all local levels with civil society. All these efforts and active participation of young people in local communities will strengthen transparency and democracy, while strengthening a sense of ownership in the local context, as well as in the enternational level. This awareness will ultimately make a real difference in the life of every young citizen. As a result, our project will bring together the best examples, views and local facts on how to best incorporate young citizens into the communities in which they live and contribute to the goal of bringing young citizens closer to the European Union.Our project will encourage more inclusion in participatory decision-making processes at national and European levels to improve the quality, transparency and ownership of local policies among young citizens. Our partner institutions are ready to continue this project to help civilian dialogue and discussion of thousands of young citizens about the future of Europe in their cities and regions and to make the countries more democratic and transparent. This view shared by the project partners states that the success of local civil dialogues in partner countries is reflected in the calls for continuous participation. Promoting and discussing issues at the local level is perceived as particularly important by young citizens. In fact, the consultation initiative of young citizens is on the way to other practices that are already well established in some partner countries and aim at developing grassroots dialogue about the EU. This view will help to transform the local dialogues of young citizens into a permanent and structured format built on inter-institutional cooperation and with a feedback mechanism. In addition, our project will provide certain normative European Added Value in order to enable young citizens to participate actively in civil life and to participate in civil society and local politics; Development and promotion of local public spaces; it will lead to strengthening the local community and civil society.The possibility of being aware of and benefiting from civil society participation through our project will help create a European Value Added to the policy in terms of making young people more participatory and better policy in the local context. Our project will approach the primary goal of serving as a tool to encourage young citizens to participate in policy and decision-making processes, starting locally, and bringing closer young citizens and its goals. In this way, it will contribute to the improvement of the democratic life. In fact, the main goal of our project is to empower young people to participate in their local and civil life as active and more informed citizens, and strengthen their potential as a European added value and contribute to a better participatory democracy.Our project will encourage young citizens to participate in civic engagement, while at the same time strengthening the added value of active citizenship by providing young citizens' political participation and policy making at local and European level. Our project can contribute to strengthening the foundations of the representative democracy by increasing the scope of policy making related to our target group, young citizens, stakeholders and civil organizations.<< Implementation >>The project ""Civic Engagement"" is a 24-months project and it involves several activities: 3 Transnational meetings: First, Kick-off Meeting, this will take place in Norway, during 2 working days and aims to delegate, to elaborate the timetables and deadlines of envisaged tasks, Elaborating project sharing and promotion plan. Second, the Intermediate Transnational Meeting, which will take place in Latvia, and aims to evaluate, elaborate the Manual, Web-Platform and Video simulation and to plan LTTA, local activities, Multiplier event and sharing and promotion strategy. Third, Final Evaluation Meeting, which will take place in Turkey, and aims to evaluate the project activities and results, the final report of the project and sustainability. Each partner organization will participate in each meeting with 2 representatives.The project has 3 tangible results: First, the Manual will consist of a toolkit in an educational format including both physical learning sessions based on Non-Formal Education methods and virtual educational sessions. It will be adaptable to the needs of the youth targets NEETs, youngsters as well as suitable of adoption by NGOs and stakeholder entities. It will be tested in a specific learning activity, will comprise different learning modules (online and offline) designed to enhance active citizenship, creativity and relational competences as well as key skills among youngsters.Second, The video Simulation:: Partners will produce a series of Mini Video Tutorials providing explicative outlines on the use of NFE methods as an instrument of teaching and learning to be released on project Web Platform, App, Blog.Third, Web Platform, Blog and App: The Consortium of partners will create a project open-access Web Platform, Blog and App. Educational results (Manual and Mini Video Tutorials) will be stored on the Web Platform and fully accessible online.The project involves “Learning, Teaching, Training Activity.” The LTTA will train 25 youth from 5 countries and increase their social, soft and hard skills. This meeting will lead to a special learning outcome to be carried out by the participants in relation to the proposed mentoring tools. The learning outcomes described here refer to the 8 Key Competences of the European Lifelong Learning Framework, in particular Key Competence Civil competence.The Virtual Multiplier event organized by LIDOSK will involve 100 youth (20 youth from each partner organization) and aims to contribute to achieving the project objectives, and spread info to the widening audience.The local activities at partner countries: all partner organization takes responsibility to organize local activities based on sharing and promotion strategy.<< Results >>This project will be an exciting opportunity for youth, for organization and for experts in the field of youth work to expand the horizons of the discipline, the latest interest in civil participation among development practitioners. As the result of the project, a strong civil society that includes and supports youth can further strengthen local communities and make significant contributions to national social, economic and political development. The project contributes to create a solid civil society and promote supportive legal and policy environments in which youth can actively participate in social, economic and political processes.As a result, the project will invest in youth development and in particular youth civil participation; This civil and democratic approach will be a logical choice for governments, international organizations and NGOs that want to support development in the European and non european countries. Due to the interrelated nature of these three transitions and their unique impact on both youth and civil society development, investing in youth civil participation will lead to ongoing demographic, economic and political transitions.With our project, We will strive to reach a democratic ideal by committing to core principles of diversity, equity, and inclusion across all levels of our project work. We believe that a democracy only works when all of its citizens’ voices are represented and valued in the decision-making process. Yet, for a variety of reasons, this is not properly happening. New Generation Citizens, as independent organizations and movements, exists to ensure that the voices of young people from communities that have historically marginalized in our democracy are heard and valued. For a two-year period, the High Impact Initiative will work with corporate-based transformation teams, including youth workers, local community partners as the target groups, in the design and implementation of the project from partner organizations working to integrate target groups into project work. The initiative, which systematically associates high-impact practices with civil and local community engagement, will help scale effective community engagement initiatives to maximize meaningful impact for partner organizations, target groups and local communities."