What is the future of youth participation in digital democracy?

Over the course of 2 years,  EYDR – Youth Participation in Digital Democracy: From Digital Skills to Digital Rights of Youth with Fewer Opportunities has worked to engage, connect, and empower young people in the digital world by developing their digital skills and raising awareness about their digital rights with an approach that balances protection and participation. By combining capacity building, advocacy, and awareness-raising, the project has helped youth with fewer opportunities move from being passive digital users to becoming advocates for their rights and contributors to democratic life.

Throughout the implementation of this project, Share Foundation, in collaboration with 7 partners from the Western Balkans and European Union has contributed to the existing literature on online youth participation through the Mappings of Youth Participation in Digital Democracy in Albania and in Montenegro and has engaged more than 30 young people including those with fewer opportunities in all stages of the project from the very beginning with the design thinking of the Youth Digital Democracy Accelerator Programme until lately with co-creation of podcasts, policy briefs and awareness raising campaigns.

Share, along with the Belgrade Center for Human Rights has co-organized and hosted a youth mobility program in Belgrade where the youngsters were able to visit their offices and receive a lecture from the organisation’s experts on key issues within the digital space. The youngsters were also trained by Share on how to produce content in an audio format, ie. create podcasts on the topics that were covered throughout the project. 

Within the project Share has analysed the ways in which young people and youth movements in the Western Balkans can utilize digital tools in order to facilitate meaningful participation. This analysis was done primarily through looking at the Serbian student movement that sprung up in December 2024 following the Novi Sad train station tragedy. The result is an article which looks into some of the lessons from the student’s digital presence and their use of digital tools and frames them as learning objectives. 

What Lessons Can Western Balkans Youth Learn from the Serbian Student Movement?

EYDR is funded by the Erasmus Capacity Building in the Field of Youth of the European Union and is implemented under the leadership of SCiDEV in partnership with UZOR, Beogradski centar za ljudska prava, Asociación Youropia, Centre for Comparative International Studies, Erasmus Student Network in Albania, National Youth Agency in Albania, and SHARE Foundation.