Walk the Talk: Youth information initiative on the European Elections

“Walk the Talk is a youth information initiative on the European Elections aimed at increasing the informed participation of young voters, emphasising the outreach to first-time voters. The main objectives are to inform young people in a youth-friendly manner about the EU, their voting rights and the importance of the elections. Broader objectives include conveying the worries of young people to policy-makers and fighting against disinformation and manipulation related to elections.

To achieve this, several actions and resources are developed:

• A multilingual web hub walkthetalk.eu containing the main information about the EU, the election process in each country and a comparison of political programmes by policy areas (soon to be available);
• A social media campaign happening in @walkthetalk_eu Instagram, TikTok and YouTube;
• A pool of young activists in peer-to-peer advocacy who are organising local-level events in 10 countries.
• A toolkit for youth information workers to conduct activities with young people.

All the campaign resources are produced in English and translated into 12 languages (CAT, DE, ES, ET, FI, FR, HR, IT, MT, PT, RO, SL). Additionally, the web hub is available in BU, HU, SK and SE.

This initiative is a wonderful resource to illustrate ways in which to communicate on political participation in a clear and youth-friendly manner. Additionally, and perhaps more importantly, the initiative is participatory in its involvement of young people themselves, through which peer-learning and advocacy by young people to young people is implemented. The initiative also welcomes cooperation from other organisations by inviting them to translate the campaign into their local languages, cross-posting content, and organising or taking part in events on the local level. All these opportunities are summarised in the supporters’ scheme and are open to any organization mainly targeting young people in the EU, thus increasing the impact of the whole initiative and including more young people as a result.”