Youth Council Prilep, on December 20, 2022, in the location of the Old Bazaar in Prilep, organized Info Day to influence public awareness among young people and policymakers for their greater responsibility and transparency in the local community. This event is part of their project “Be the creator of your autonomous zone – Youth Center.”
Although intended for all citizens, this event focused on young people because they need the most to open a Youth Center. The Info Day was organized to ensure greater citizen engagement, encourage greater community involvement and mobilization in seeking political accountability and transparency from elected representatives, and remind local authorities of their promises.
The volunteers of the Youth Council Prilep and the mobilizers of the community applied the Opinion Boulevard method. Through visibly placed boards, the young people had the opportunity to provide their opinions on whether the local self-government’s action on the issue of opening a Youth Center is satisfactory and whether they consider it is in the process of implementation. The young people had the opportunity to provide their opinion on what kind of activities and services the Youth Center should provide.
“The Youth Center needs young people to be able to spend part of their free time interestingly and creatively. The Mayor promised the Youth Center in Prilep, but it has not yet been fulfilled,” said Andrej Tosheski, a community mobilizer.
“We, as young people, have interests, and we want to share these interests to network with other people. A place where we can discuss our favorite books and movies, a place where we can play video games and exchange ideas and thoughts, a place where there will be gigs and the like. This is what we need. That is why we are here today to raise the awareness of young people and local authorities, that is, to prove to young people that we have the future in our hands and everything depends on us. Therefore, we shall be committed and make the Youth Center a reality,” said Maria Dimitrioska, a community mobilizer.
This activity directly mobilized 70 young people from the municipality of Prilep, and indirectly about 100 citizens. Youth Council Prilep summarized the opinions and perceptions of the young people in the form of recommendations, which later, after the implementation of the other two Info Days that will be implemented in January 2023, will be translated into a Policy Brief that will be submitted to the Mayor and the Council of the Municipality and will be publicly promoted on the websites of Youth Council Prilep and Radio Puls.
The implementation of the info day of the Youth Council Prilep is made possible by the project “Support to Electoral Reforms in North Macedonia” of the Government of Switzerland, implemented by the International Foundation for Electoral Systems (IFES), and the grants are administered by the Macedonian Center for International Cooperation (MCIC).
