What is the Youth Participation Resource Centre?

The Youth Participation Resource Centre has been the contact for youth participation projects in Germany since August 2001. Since August 2004 the team has had a new line-up. Today we’re a group of young people, now based in Berlin, who want to make our ideas a reality.

As a Youth Participation Resource Centre we give advice and support and provide networking for young people and youth projects across Germany, and co-ordinate pilot projects relevant to youth participation. We hold training seminars and networking events, and supervise the setting up of the Infoscout network and regional resource centres for youth participation.

About the Infoscout pool

Effective strengthening of youth participation can best be achieved through local advice and support. This is why we, the national Resource Centre, have the overall aim of setting up regional resource centres right across Germany. In recognition of their life skills, young people themselves are establishing their own points of contact for youth participation.

For this reason we are in the process of setting up an Infoscout pool across Germany. Infoscouts are motivated young people who act as regional contacts and form a network to provide an effective exchange of information.

We want the Infoscout pool to become the largest possible network of active young people. Young people from various organisations as well as those involved individually will be an integral part of the pool, engaging in diverse areas on local, regional or national levels. This network is available to everyone who needs the services of competent young people. It’s a large think-tank of young people who can participate in various activities, whether it be attending conferences, topical discussions with political decision-makers, evaluating new plans or taking part in newspaper interviews.

The Infoscout pool will also support the work of the Youth Participation Resource Centre and make it available on a local level. As local experts and specialists with knowledge of the regional organisations, the Infoscouts can maintain direct contact with projects advised by the Youth Participation Resource Centre. The regional centres are set up by establishing this advisory structure and creating links with existing organisations.

Each initiator will have a free hand in deciding on the structure of their regional resource centre. Possible formats include umbrella organisations, project offices, networks of contact points, round tables, discussion forums, young people’s self-organisation, youth groups and research groups – and many more.

The regional resource centres’ job is to support existing youth participation groups as contact points, as well as encouraging new projects and making it possible to put forward other ideas.

As a mediator between the participants and as the organiser of larger networking meetings, the Resource Centre initiates and intensifies the direct exchange of experience and information. Through a nationwide ‘Core Group’ of young people supported by the Youth Participation Resource Centre, the Infoscout pool and the regional resource centres will be competently, intensively and continuously interconnected.