Little School of Democracy

10 May 2004

Last April, the Youth Centre �Svetionik� (Lighthouse) and the informal group �Crno Bijeli Svijet� (Black and White World- BWW) from Prijedor, started a project titled �Little School of Democracy�. The Project was started in cooperation with OSCE, the Local Democracy Agency and the Municipality of Prijedor.

The project plans to engage the media to call on the representatives of youth organizations, as well as youth organizations of political parties, to enroll in the school of democracy and human rights. The workshops that will be organized under the School, will help the youth activists to acquire the basic knowledge in democracy, human rights and freedoms and electoral principles and mechanisms. In addition, meetings will be organized between the youth activists and representatives of executive and legislative branches of the Government, as well as politicians and candidates running in elections. The whole project will receive the appropriate level of media coverage.

Zoran Sovilj, the coordinator of BWW groups, thinks that the young are very passive and uninterested in participating in the political life. In his own words, �the main excuse that the youth quotes for such a passive behaviour is their belief that nobody asks them anything anyway, and that they can�t change anything.�

The main goal of the �Little School of Democracy� is to involve the young in the social processes and to raise their awareness that they have to take their own destiny in their own hands. The participants in the workshops will be educated to develop the culture of dialogue of the youth and the elected representatives of the citizens. Sovilj says that in this way �... the youth will get to know that they are not pushed to the margins when it comes to finding solutions to their problems. Also, it will increase the level of responsibility of the representatives of the local communities.�

The Project will end in December 2004, when analysis of its success will be conducted and presented.