Foreign and Commonwealth Office European Youth Parliament Forum, in association with the European Youth Parliament UK

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Method(s) Used

Online Forums (Methods)

Name of person who posted the project:

Kerry Ryan

Location of project:

United Kingdom

Date when the project started:

2005

Date when the project ended/project ongoing:

Background to project:

The European Youth Parliament (EYP) is a pan-European educational foundation that seeks to promote young people's skills in communication and team-building. Its members are encouraged to take a practical interest in current affairs and the democratic process.
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The European Youth Parliament has a UK Division (EYP UK). The EYP UK Outreach Programme is funded by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO).
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Purpose of project:

This forum was not part of a formal consultation exercise.
The EYP seeks to foster young people's awareness of European citizenship and politics through events that involve young people in more than 30 countries at a local, regional, national and international level.
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The FCO wanted to support the EYP UK, which was aiming to supplement its offline events with an online forum. The forum sought to enhance engagement by discussing a series of topical themes:

Climate change;
Employment skills;
European enlargement;
International aid;
Movement of labour;
Security.

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There were also discussions about the experience of being an EYP member, and which discussion topics should be raised on the forum.

Project activities:

Online deliberative forum
The forum was readable by anyone but registration was required to contribute. The core user group was young people aged between 16 - 22 years from across the European Union.
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The forum was pre-moderated. Moderation was carried out by named members of the EYP UK alumni.
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Each discussion was initiated with a statement and questions from a member of the moderation team, or a contributing expert or politician.
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The FCO's communications division helped to find experts and politicians who could get involved in the forum. It supported the EYP moderators as they developed content and promotional activity for the forum.
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Project results:

Strengths

This forum set out to achieve and delivered a good geographic spread of users;
There was close and well-managed collaboration between staff at the FCO and EYP;
The forum raised an impressive range of discussion themes, with opportunity for further suggestions from users;
Several experts and politicians were recruited to contribute to the forum;
Summaries of discussions were produced at the close of forum and distributed to registrants and the media.
Potential for improvement
The depth and frequency of interaction by experts and politicians was not consistent;
Closer link-up with other outreach activities (such as offline summits) would have bolstered the purpose and usage of the forum;
Rate of registrations and volume of posts were low;
There was insufficient time was given for the forum to develop a sense of community;
Greater use could have been made of rich media content;
Given the core user group, the registration and participation rates may have benefited from inclusion of a translation service.

Contact details:

www.eyptalk.net
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Source:Digital Dialogues Second Phase report - Hansard Society/Ministry of Justice 2007.
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