CLYP – The Civic Lab for Young People, a space to enhance young people’s self-confidence and resilience for more civic and social engagement
Three out of four young people lack the self-confidence they need to initiate any entrepreneurship or community projects (SEntrA project, 2021). Spaces such as incubators, accelerators, or civic or social challenges/competitions put a lot of pressure on young people for success without necessarily allowing them to fail and learn and build their resilience. Also, the personal development programs are concerned with developing employability skills such as communication, teamwork, flexibility, digital skills, etc., focusing less on self-confidence, resilience, a sense of initiative, or getting young people ready not only for the labor market but also the civic participation and entrepreneurship world.
The Civic Lab for Young People (CLYP) project was initiated by Atlantic Technological University (Ireland), Asset Technology (Greece), C.School for Creative Acts (Romania), Gutenberg – the German-speaking Students’ NGO (Romania), Donegal Youth Service (Ireland), We Organisation (The Netherlands), and @KomPro (Norway) to close this gap in connecting 1) the personal development of young people, mainly their self-confidence and resilience, and 2) the civic and entrepreneurial development of young people.
CLYP project aims to innovate, expand and improve the youth sector, in order to create a better space for young people to become self-confident, autonomous, and resilient citizens, enhancing their civic engagement and social entrepreneurship initiative.
The project started with a networking event in Letterkenny, Ireland, in February, hosted by the Atlantic Technological University, which brought together all the partners who explored the idea of the development of a space, such as The Civic Lab for Young People, through a design thinking process. Then, in March, we submitted our ideas for funding, so we could start building the methods and the tools that they need to set up civic labs in our countries.
During the event in February, we shared knowledge, information, best practices, and ideas that could be used to build youth projects to address the lack of creative confidence of young people and stakeholders’ lack of trust in young people’s capacities. Also, the work we did helped the participants to develop specific competences in social entrepreneurship, social innovation, and civic and social incubation models. Finally, we designed the very first prototypes, parts of the CLYP project.
The 3-day networking activity was co-funded by the European Commission through the Erasmus+ Programme and Léargas, the Irish National Agency for the programme. Also, the partners applied for funding to continue the development of CLYP under the same funding programme – Erasmus+.