Reinventing Democracy in the Digital Era
Press Release

In the week of 8th-12th of February, 20 young people between the ages of 18-30 gathered in Platres to discuss issues of democratic governance, under the project “Reinventing Democracy in the Digital Era” which is funded by the United Nations Democracy Fund and it is implemented by the non-governmental organization Future Worlds Center.

This ambitious international initiative has as its key objective to increase youth participation in decision making processes with regards to democratic governance by empowering young people from across the world to invent and propose new, innovative and concrete actions aiming at reinventing democracy by taking advantage of what the digital era has to offer.

Under the guidance of the director of the program Dr. Yiannis Laouris, the participants discussed the shortcomings of our current systems of governance which could be improved through technology and proposed actions and projects to solve them. In order to collect the ideas of participants, the methodology of Structured Democratic Dialogue was employed. This method is very structured in process and very democratic in content and allows participants to truly engage in discussion, harnessing their collective wisdom.

The European SDDP co-Laboratory was the first one in a series of co-Laboratories which will take place in five different regions. During 2016 and 2017, youth from Africa, the Americas, Australasian and the Middle East will have the chance to join European participants in their effort to reinvent democracy and offer their ideas for addressing the issue of democratic shortcomings. The next co-Laboratory will take place in Nairobi this April.