Participation in Democratic Life and Elections Poster

SALTO PI has developed an editable visual tool in the form of a poster that includes some examples of traditional and alternative forms of participation, as well as policy topics of interest to young people. In addition to the poster itself, an entire package is available, which includes the poster file and canva link, illustrations of the poster as separate visual elements available as a zip folder and canva link and user guidelines with ideas about different applications of these visuals.

The examples of participation forms on the poster are:

• Creating an Erasmus+ or European Solidarity Corps project
• Volunteering and protesting
• Lobbying for policy change
• Voting in elections

The policy topics on the poster stem from the results of the European Year of Youth 2022, which identified the following policy topics collected from youth organisations and representatives of young people’s voices in Europe. These are policy areas which concern young Europeans the most, as follows:

• Health and wellbeing
• Employment and inclusion
• Environment and climate change
• Education and training
• International cooperation and European values

The poster serves as a visual aid to help explicate and discuss different ways in which young citizens can participate in democratic life, in order to increase impact towards different policy topics they care about. Furthermore the poster helps to visualise how participation is never something that can only be done in one fixed way, but rather a process that makes various topics its content and includes different activities and behaviours. This means that voting in elections does not exclude the possbility of participating more informally, for example by protesting, and vice versa.

The poster can be used in versatile ways – For training and learning experiences or simply for communication purposes. Have a look at the user guidelines accompanying the poster and its visual elements to get more ideas and inspiration to put this tool to use!