The MVI Academy “Skills for Engagement & Impact” is built around one idea: what gets written down is what gets passed on. This autumn, the Academy has gathered its first full collection of case studies, 20 real examples from 20 European countries showing how young people are being engaged in civic and democratic life.

Each case study follows the same ten-section Academy template, from the background and objectives to the approach, results and lessons for other organisations. This makes them easy to compare and easy to reuse in youth work.

What the collection covers

The 20 case studies are grouped around the four areas the Academy works on:

Digital engagement

• Portugal: an online and SMS-voting youth participatory budget in Portugal.
• Germany: the aula platform for democracy in schools.
• Estonia: the digital leap in youth work, including a youth e-participation hackathon.
• Finland: the Virtual Council (Digiraati), an online dialogue between young people and decision-makers.
• Spain: the Barcelona Youth Forum, a youth citizens’ assembly supported by the Decidim platform.

Gamification and civic education

• Netherlands: Bad News, a game that builds resistance to misinformation.
• Austria: the Democracy Workshop of the Austrian Parliament.
• France: the Parlement des enfants, where school classes draft a bill.
• Italy: Un giorno in Senato, where classes draft and debate a bill.
• United Kingdom: BBC iReporter, a newsroom decision game.

Communication and media literacy

• Sweden: NoHate Sweden, a national youth campaign against online hate.
• Denmark: On, a national digital citizenship platform with peer teaching.
• Poland: a fact-checking academy for young people.
• Romania: media education for high-school students.
• Belgium: Nieuws in de Klas, bringing news media into classrooms.

EU youth policy and inclusion

• Slovenia: a youth delegate in international climate negotiations.
• Croatia: youth councils from local level to a national council.
• Czechia: a ministry Youth Panel built around diversity and fewer opportunities.
• Greece: a national Youth Parliament for upper-secondary pupils.
• Ireland: Young Voices, Ireland’s EU Youth Dialogue.

What stands out

Reading the 20 cases side by side, a few patterns appear again and again:

• Participation leads somewhere. The strongest examples move from learning, to evidence, to a conversation with a real decision-maker, and then to follow-up.
• Young people are co-creators. Classes drafting a bill, pupils teaching younger pupils, and young people running their own campaigns all give young people a real role, not just a seat in the room.
• Local to national works. Selection that starts locally and ends in a national or EU-level event, such as a parliament or a conference, gives the work weight and visibility.
• Digital and in person go together. Digital tools help most when they connect to face-to-face activity, and several cases combine the two.
• Evidence is still thin. Many of the programmes publish how many young people took part, but few publish an independent evaluation of what they learned. This is a gap that Academy participants can help close in their own work.

How this contributes to the Academy

The Academy is more than a training programme: it is a learning and resource hub that grows with its network. The 20 case studies feed directly into it in three ways:

• Training material: they give youth workers, educators and civil society professionals ready-made examples to learn from and adapt.
• Toolkit content: they provide tested methods and activities for the Academy’s Engagement Toolkit.
• Peer learning: they open a shared reference point for the peer-learning cycles, so participants can compare approaches across countries.

This work supports the Academy’s goal for 2026: learning modules and a curriculum on youth engagement, a practical Youth Engagement Toolkit, and a collection of case studies and testimonials from across the network.

Share your own case study

This collection is only a start. If your organisation has a project or practice that strengthened youth participation, civic engagement or active citizenship, we would like to hear from you. You can download the Academy case study template and the testimonial guide on the Academy page, and send your completed documents to secretary@mvinternational.info.

The 20 case studies

Each case study is available as a PDF.