Showroom: Best Practice in Politics

Best Practice in Politics

We curate exemplary political work that successfully tackles today’s most pressing issues. This platform is a hub of tried and tested best practices in politics.

“Casettiamo, insieme possiamo!” – Changing the city together

A beautiful municipality with a decaying economy and population sees a revival of community life by involving citizens in all aspects of re-designing the city.

Ain Qana Community Support Project

A Lebanese municipality uses idle uncultivated land to feed the poor.

Brunnenpassage: A Space for Participatory Art Production

Brunnenpassage operates as a space for professional artists and amateurs to co-create art, thus fostering social cohesion in a highly diverse neighbourhood.

Celebrating the Beauty of Diversity

This one–day festival aims to showcase the beauty and richness of faith and culture from the diverse faith communities in Dublin City, inspiring people to take positive actions in their communities and workplaces.

Choualiq Youth Community Graffiti Project

The village of Choualiq in Lebanon uses street art to show young people how they can help to shape their community through political engagement.

Cool Streets

A practice for heat adaptation in three of Vienna’s hottest areas converted urban streets to Cool Streets, offering water mist sprayers, seating, and neighbourhood-fostering features for four weeks.

Creative Tourism Lab

The youth in Opatija create a lab for creative tourism, taking over the design of the logo, the development of activities, and marketing directions.

Cuckoo’s Nest

An apartment in a neighbourhood gets converted into a centre which serves the needs of many migratory residents, by offering educational help, care services, language courses, and various other services.

Education Fair

Youth from disadvantaged schools learn to take responsibility in a four-day fair, organising workshops and performances along various themes.

Empty Property as a Co-Creative City Lab

A small interdisciplinary urban consultancy promotes democratic design processes and focuses, in this project, on students becoming involved in the planning of public spaces in Asnæs, Denmark.

Essen Packt An! Collaboration Through Social Media

This project started when the citizens of Essen wanted to help each other after a severe storm in 2014, with the initiative becoming a firmly established organisation and an example of how to efficiently organise in the age of social media.

Facing Change with a Common Vision

The two cities foster cooperation in diverse dialogue formats with representatives from civil society, the Municipality, the private sector, and citizens, in order to overcome the economic changes affecting the region.

Feuding Youths Becoming Change-Makers

This programme counteracts conflict and radicalisation among youth from two feuding neighbourhoods in Tripoli, Lebanon’s northern capital, by creating an empowering counter-narrative that allows for positive actions, such as beautifying public spaces.

Frome Community Fridge

One community fridge saves 90,000 food items per year from being wasted whilst providing a unique opportunity for social connections to form.

Home for Cooperation

The community centre in the “dead zone” between Turkish and Greek Cyprus adapts to the needs of the communities and keeps its workshops and programmes free-of-charge and open for all to join.

Improving Educational Structures with Civocracy

Civocracy is an online platform that was created to enable the community to actively contribute to local educational reforms, resulting in six major structural changes.

Intra-Youth Dialogue on Social Cohesion

This project gathers speakers, especially the young, from diverse backgrounds living in Erbil to facilitate dialogue on coexistence between minorities living within the Kurdistan region and the Kurdish people.

Joint Campaigning for Horsh Beirut

An advocacy campaign aims to revive a park in Beirut in an inclusive and participatory way, offering the opportunity for surrounding neighbours from different backgrounds to meet and share a space instead of being separated by it.

Kalkbreite – Connected Living

A housing cooperative in the heart of Zurich, Switzerland, aims to overcome the negative effects of gentrification with participation tools at every level and a deliberately chosen, diverse mix of residents.

Khair al-Koura – Local Sustainable Development

By forming partnerships between the private sector and the municipalities, job opportunities are created in Jordan for a region with a high influx of refugees.

Learning Each Other’s Language

To overcome the language barriers in Kosovo, the Municipality of Kamenica holds courses for the Serbian and Albanian citizens who are interested in learning each other’s languages.

Mixed Youngster Housing Community

Startblok Riekerhaven aims become more that just a housing project, and function as a self-managed community for Dutch young people and young foreigners that provides a good start to adult life in the Netherlands.

Mobile in the Valley

As a result of a survey among youth, a mobile application called TwoGo is created, enabling people to share rides in a rural area of Germany.

Multi-Purpose Community Centre

A multi-purpose community centre is established, in order to address some of the challenges posed by a large number of refugees moving into the municipality, open to locals and refugees.

Music Safari in Public Spaces

This project celebrates the music of different communities and brings people together in public space, engaging Chechen, Syrian, Bosnian, Turkish, Afghan, Sinti, Ukrainian, and Austrian citizens with their self-produced music.

My School, My Vote!

Almost 4000 students participate and design proposals for projects that benefit the larger community, and get put into practice with the help of teachers and local NGOs.

Open Schools Athens

School buildings are used in the evenings and on weekends for the benefit of the wider community.

Pop Up on Vivid Street

Child and youth participation is an all year activity in Postojna, involving different governmental, NGO, and private stakeholders that organise workshops and festivals.

Protecting Myself, Protecting Others

This campaign provides information about reproductive health in secondary schools, as well as free gynaecological check-ups for middle-aged women, generally motivating self-care in the region.

Re-Imagining Reconciliation

‘Imagine’ is an educational programme with a focus on anti-racist education and an education for a culture of peace, which was launched after many months of efforts and with the agreement of the leaders of the two main communities on the island of Cyprus.

Reconciliation through Storytelling

Local Peace Committees (LPCs) were formed following the retaking of Mosul and the Ninewa Plains from IS control in 2017, consisting of male and female youth from all ethno-religious groups, working to promote social cohesion, peace-building, and reconciliation as people return and work to rebuild their cities and lives.

Rights 4U Live-In

This initiative wants to create awareness about the safe use of the internet amongst children, young people, and other key stakeholders, including parents and educators, with camps that offer a variety of activities.

RISE – Responsible Indigenous Strategy for Empowerment

This project creates an ongoing dialogue and employment opportunities for Indigenous youth in mainstream settings.

Schule im Aufbruch – School Gets Going

This initiative aims to enable and encourage students to be enthusiastic and creative by establishing a new learning culture, instead of fixating on fulfilling given curricula.

Social Act

This idea brings increased capacities to young women and men in Kosovo in terms of critical thinking, advocacy, soft skills, and designing and leading social innovations – with an emphasis on vulnerable groups and gender equality.

Social Cohesion Summer Camp

A summer camp brings a bit of normality to sixty displaced Syrian children in Lebanon, offering activities and lectures.

Social Inclusion for Trafficking Survivors Programme

The programme run by the Serbian NGO Atina supports the social (re-)integration and economic empowerment of women and young girls who have survived exploitation and human trafficking.

Spilamberto and Us: Active Citizens for the Common Good

A Municipality offers several cooperations with citizens, such as gardening and maintaining public spaces, to create a more connected way of living in Spilamberto.

Students As Experts 4 Change

Students As Experts 4 Change is an Educational Design with the goal to allow school students to become active agents of change, by supporting them to develop their own social impact strategies.

Summer Urban Camp

The Summer Urban Camp on the Greek island of Chios lets children take part in diverse activities over the three months of their summer holiday, allowing their parents to continue to work.

Technological and Intercultural Skills for Young Refugees

PEACEBUILDERS is a series of workshops and direct actions at the intersection of education and intercultural dialogue, undertaken by children and youth in refugee camps, which are aimed at improving their community and living environment, leading both to their integration into society, and to the improvement of their well-being.

United Through Sports and Community Engagement

Pineto United is a grassroots football team that seeks to facilitate interaction between young asylum seekers and Italian youth through sports, helping to create a new sense of community among Pineto’s residents.

Werkstatt Junges Wien – Workshop Young Vienna

The City of Vienna asked over 22.000 children and young people about their views on the city and their future, and included them in its youth strategy.

Young Men Initiative

The Young Men Initiative works with adolescent boys to promote gender equality, supporting them to understand the harmful consequences of widespread patriarchal norms.