29th Session of the Congress of Local and Regional Authorities of the Council of Europe (Strasbourg, 20-22 October 2015)

Speech of Ricardo Rio, Mayor of Braga, Portugal, on the debate of the Report “Bringing down barriers to youth participation: adopting a lingua franca for local and regional authorities and young people”

Mr. Jean Claude Frécon

President of Congress

Distinguish chairs of the Congress committees

Distinguish Congressman’s

Distinguish representatives and invited guests,

Please let me start my communication by greeting the Congress and its President for the invitation addressed to me and the Municipality of Braga in order to let the Congress know how it was possible to continuously renew one of the oldest towns in Europe, attracting youngsters and moving my city to become a 100% Youth Friendly City.

As stated, Braga is one of the oldest towns of Europe with over 2.000 years of History that go back to before the Roman Empire (when it was one the major cities in the North of the Iberian Peninsula). Throughout the centuries, the town kept its economic and political importance but it was only in recent years that it emerged as one of the youngest and more dynamic cities in Portugal.

The third most important town of Portugal (just after Lisbon and Oporto) has almost 40% of its population below 25 years old, having a positive net between births and deaths and attracting thousands every year to study at University of Minho and Catholic University.

 It is a great honour to bring my city to this palace of democracy, solidarity and understanding.

Let me also congratulate the Congress for this initiative on a draft resolution concerning the establishment of a trustful relationship between young people and elected representatives.

It´s very inspiring for us to follow the work of this Congress, the work of the Council of Europe, and the work of the Advisory Council on Youth from the Council of Europe, and to know that this work is being developed in harmony and with an integrated vision.

It is a concrete proof that it is possible to establish real co-management processes in the relation between elected representatives and civil society.

Also a word of appreciation to the Advisory Council on Youth for the effort and the contributions made during the last mandates in order to embrace news perspectives of participation and active citizenship.

Finally, let me address a very special word to the rapporteur of the present resolution, Mr. Malcolm BYRNE, from Ireland.

“Creating a lingua franca for local and regional authorities and young people” in order to bring down barriers to participation it´s for us a very welcome resolution. I personally consider that my city was inspired by the need to create and developed a Local Action Plan to undertake a European Youth Capital in the year of 2012 and now to the Ibero-American Youth Capital in the next year of 2016. This need made us, in a certain way, pioneer on this issues related with youth.

Braga EYC 2012 was, in fact, for our Youth Sector, a challenge.

A Challenge to present proposals and ideas to the general program and by this way establish in our city a “Prototyping” Mindset.

Our Youth Capital in 2012 was also a challenge to all our citizens to establish intergenerational dialogue to discuss the 2020 agenda, the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), the post 2015 Agenda and recognise that young people are in real fact worried with our environment, that they are concerned and focus in fighting poverty and promote inclusion. They are also concerned helping families in using technologies and to face the new challenges of a Digital Agenda.

This opportunity as translated in current days on a massive participation of the citizens of Braga in our General Participative Budget. It is a personal proud to me to analyse the results of our 3 projects of Participative budget that also include our local schools and by this way, have brought democracy back to our schools.

It was also a pioneer experience in Portugal the establishment of the first Youth Participated Budget managed by a Local Youth Council, which results were recently announced. Our Participative budget for Youth “TU DECIDES” allowed young people to propose their priorities projects to our city. Almost 2.000 youngsters participated and voted in this process choosing cultural, sport and inclusive projects. TU DECIDES it’s a new contribution as a social innovation project to bring co-management to Local Youth Councils.

It was a very unique satisfaction to see that our plan to introduce, in the last year, some Structured Dialogue Principles in the work agenda of our schools, produced 2 youth parliaments. The first one of these projects placed young people, with ages between 11 and 15 years old, to think about local participation and local democratic proposals. The other project allowed the discussion of national level policies in a joint project with the Portuguese Youth and Sports Institute for students with ages between 13 and 18 years old.

Youth is not, and I underline this, disconnected from the economic issues. There were several actions undertaken by our NGO Sector to discuss development models that can provide solutions for youngsters considering the creation of jobs in our cities. Our university Students and our schools embraced several entrepreneurship projects, participated in several European programs and today we have installed on our Youth Centre, our Startup Braga, opening doors to innovation and technology with the support of world network of mentors, tutors and organizations, like for example Microsoft Ventures.

The Youth Capital title was in fact a very important tool to prototype new experiences and drive the attention of our youngsters to European Union and to European Union Programs.

In the year of 2009 our City had 2 Youth NGO’s applying for Youth in Action Programme and at the end of 2014, our City had 14 NGO’s applying to this programme with success.

I believe the results of this program in Braga are amazing on a social level, bringing true participation to our streets, our youth infra structures and to all positive environment that you can feel in Braga. But I must recognize, as well, that the efforts of our youngsters in this programme are also bringing economic development to my City. In the last 3 years the Youth Sector was able to bring more then 1 000 000€ to our city and give life to our local business, like hotels and restaurants.

As Mayor of Braga, and considering the aspects that I had opportunity to share with the Congress, I must consider myself as a happy Mayor, even knowing that there is still much work to do to bring down the barriers of youth participation.

It is my will and compromise to bring to my municipality a new mindset oriented to social innovation and strategic development. I made a challenge to all my co-workers in order to identify and undertake sectorial Strategic Development Plans to be launched until 2017.

The Youth Sector was one of the first to present a plan to drive Braga into a 100% Youth City.

It is once again a project financed by Erasmus + Programme on Key Action 2, and will give the opportunity to Braga, together with the cities of Valencia, Riga, Torino, Cluj-Napoca, Ganja and Varna to undertake a bottom up process of development of the cities by integrating young people on it and in all phases of the project.

It is in fact a process that will take us to a deeper reflection about our actions to support young people.

To identify policies in order to invest better on a finance model to the youth sector with tailor-made projects considering the priorities of our cities.

To understand how we can optimize the infrastructures that are available for youngster and how to make them use this resources on efficient way.

To reform the functionality of our Local Youth Council or other representative youth forums, and to understand the possibility to bring co-management into this Structured Dialogue Process.

Finally to settle long-term and oriented development objectives for our youth sector, with the definition of bottom-up strategic plans with massive participation of young people and managed with the organization of Non Formal Education dynamics in our schools, Youth Centre, and civil society.

The aim is to create a quality label for Youth Friendly Cities by peers, in order to create conditions of empowerment and fight social exclusion by preventing our youngsters to be in the future in a deficit situation.

Thank you very much for your attention

Ricardo Rio