Youth civic participation in the south Baltic region. Example of Lithuania, Poland and Sweden

• Gomółka, Krystyna
• Borucińska, Izabela
• Stašys, Rimantas
• Civinskas, Remigijus

ENInternational projects, particularly those co-financed by the European Union, have an important role to play in promoting young people’s civic participation. They allow the exchange of knowledge and experience as well as the creation of new solutions to problems and their implementation at the grassroots level. This was the role of the South Baltic Youth Core Groups Network (SB YCGN) project implemented in the framework of the 2014–2020 Interreg V-A South Baltic Programme by a Polish-Lithuanian-Swedish partnership. One of its outputs is this monograph. The aim of this study was to show youth civic participation as a social inclusion element in the South Baltic Region in need of reinforcement, based on the examples of selected municipalities from Lithuania, Poland and Sweden. The authors focused on the diagnosis of key elements of youth civic engagement at local and cross-border level, taking into account the context of national youth policies and the European Union policy. The problem was highlighted from the perspective of two social groups: adult decision-makers represented by employees of local institutions and young people aged 14–24 from the Lithuanian municipality of Telšiai, the Polish municipalities of Dzierzgoń, Elbląg, Gdynia, Iława and Nowe Miasto Lubawskie, and the Swedish municipality of Hässleholm. The study consists of six chapters written by four authors, two from Poland and two from Lithuania. [Annotation in the book]