I am pleased to announce that we have partnered with the Foundation for European Initiatives in Silesia (FEIS) [1]https://feis.org.pl/ and have begun work on the development of a Polish version of a portal to support citizen involvement in democratic processes called Decidim [2]https://decidim.org/.
FEIS is dedicated to supporting young people in the areas of volunteering, civil society building and non-formal education through local and international activities. It is accredited by Erasmus+ Youth and is involved in carefully planned projects in the long-standing strategy for youth in Silesia.
The target activity of the Future Democracy Foundation is to support civil society in Poland, especially in the context of providing digital tools to strengthen this civic engagement. One of these activities of the FEIS foundation, in turn, is to support municipal youth councils.
Here we have found room for joint work. We would like to launch a Polish version of the Decidim portal and use it both in youth councils and for Polish citizens in general.
Decidim is a digital platform for citizen participation, giving access to functionalities such as proposal submission, meetings, voting, collaborative document creation, conferences and surveys. It was first launched in Barcelona in February 2016, but has been made available under a free licence, allowing other entities to implement it in their own countries.
We believe that using this tool in strengthening democracy will facilitate the way in which the voice of citizens, including young people, can be heard. In line with the objectives of Future Democracy, we should counter the crisis of democracy and build a model that better incorporates elements of direct and digital democracy. This portal will facilitate this task.
Our work is currently at an early stage. We are translating the portal into Polish and looking for partners to take part in the project. We have successfully launched the local installation of Decidim and carried out its initial evaluation, hence we believe that this platform will meet our objectives and contribute to the building of democracy in Poland.
