Empowering Young Influencers for Promoting Diversity & Strengthening Democracy

Karol’s Motivation

Landecker Democracy Fellow Karol titled his project “Empowering Young Influencers for Promoting Diversity & Strengthening Democracy.” Democracy is effective only when voices of all people from diverse communities are heard. Recent events in the European Union and United States show that one of the most impactful causes of the current crisis of democracy is a collective neglect of the needs of youth. In Poland, Eastern Europe, and also in MENA region countries, millions of young people have lost hope, citing how inefficient, non-transparent, and corrupt political elites are.

Public opinion research published reveals a lack of political engagement among young people in Central Europe. Why? They are not taken seriously. Sometimes, their voice of anger might be heard within larger movements. Other times, their voices are treated as harmless or irrelevant, and only viewed as serious if there are tangible threats or consequences, which are then used against the movement to deem them as too dangerous or working against the common good.

Project Development

Utilizing effective methods of community organizing and developing a communication strategy creates relevant and efficient social movements. To make young voices heard, Empowering Young Influencers for Promoting Diversity & Strengthening Democracy project aims to train up to 60 young leaders with various backgrounds in creating communication strategy as well as equipping them with community organizing skills.

Two series of workshops will be conducted with the help of experienced journalists, politicians, influencers, and NGO activists from Poland and the EU.

• During the first series of workshops with three groups between 10 and 20 participants, Karol will lead basic workshops on how to create a vision and develop one’s map of values to translate it into an effective communication strategy. Young leaders will also discuss examples of most effective ways of engaging volunteers as well as the most common mistakes in volunteer movement management.
• During the second series of workshops, participants will share in a special hackathon to develop their own event and project ideas on building social cohesion and making young voices better heard by involving their peers. They will work together on how to create their own volunteer communities, with an ultimate goal of effectively utilizing the skills they learn to influence local and nationwide political decisions.

Participants will be recruited only from Poland. Karol is focusing on recruiting people already involved in a specific kind of activities or social justice causes, mainly those fighting climate change or those working in human rights on topics such as equality and migration. He believes climate change and migration are the two biggest challenges of the 21st century and those young leaders, who find strength in themselves to work on it, need the most support. His goal is to help these young leaders understand the process of influencing political decisions and develop the appropriate skills to build efficient movements and create effective communication strategies.

Updated February 2022.