Workshop on Political Youth Education: State Assembly Elections and Youth Participation

With this year’s state elections in mind, the focus was on various challenges and projects relating to political education. Discussions centred on how to engage first-time voters, how to establish more polling stations for under-18s in rural areas, how to maintain young people’s motivation from local elections right through to state elections, and how to ensure that youth policy issues remain a priority after the election. Another key focus was on far-right and anti-democratic developments. Discussions centred on attacks by far-right parties on youth work, uncertainties in political education, and the question of how best to reach young people. It became clear that youth organisations, too, need low-threshold access points, robust methods and opportunities to exchange ideas on how to reach young people who are increasingly disillusioned with democratic parties. There is also great concern regarding impending cuts to institutional funding and to support programmes for democracy education and political youth education.

The project and practical insights sessions presented various approaches to political youth education linked to the upcoming elections in Saxony-Anhalt and past elections in Thuringia and Baden-Württemberg. These included various activities organised by the Saxony-Anhalt Children’s and Youth Association, featuring numerous youth-focused and outreach initiatives such as ‘Schnippeln und Schnacken’; the continuation of the ‘Lohnt sich’ initiative by the Thuringia State Youth Association, featuring podcast episodes; interviews with young people and discussions with leading politicians, a lobbying strategy and a first-time voters’ campaign by the Landesjugendring in Baden-Württemberg in the context of the recent state election, as well as “The Gäme”, a playful format on state elections organised by, amongst others, the Stadtjugendring Stuttgart. These examples highlighted how political youth education can reach young people through media-based, strategic, outreach-based and playful approaches, engage them with politics and make political processes understandable. Overarching practical issues were also addressed. These included education for democracy and discourses on values, the preservation of spaces for dialogue and diversity within youth organisations, historical and political education and work at memorial sites, transfer work, anti-discrimination, and the question of why public funding for educational programmes is primarily understood within the context of schools. It became clear that political youth education within youth organisations has its own approaches, languages and formats, which it continues to develop in order to reach young people on a voluntary basis beyond formal educational settings.

The workshop thus demonstrated once again the diverse ways in which political youth education is organised within youth organisations and youth federations. It combines political education on elections, participation, advocacy for youth policy and democratic self-education – whilst also providing a space to reflect collectively on current challenges and translate these into practice.

Further dates for the Political Youth Education Workshop can be found at Dates and Events . For further networking and the exchange of information, ideas and events in the field of political youth education within youth association work, there is the Political Youth Education mailing list. Membership of the mailing list is open to all interested parties, active participants and those responsible for political youth education within youth federations and associations; requests to join the mailing list can be sent to the Political Youth Education Unit .