Day after the 25th birthday celebration of Belgrade Open School, a kick off meeting of new, transnational project YOU4EU - Citizen Participation 2.0, was held in BOS' premises on 8th and 9th of November.

This project gathers five partners from different countries, so next to BOS acting as a lead organisation, GONG (Zagreb - Croatia), PiNA (Koper - Slovenia), Institut alternativa (Podgorica - Montenegro) and CIVIO (Madrid - Spain) also took part in this meeting. These organizations have years of experience in education, advocacy of diverse public policies, investigative journalism, active citizenship and many more areas.

Given that two organizations come from non-EU countries, and three are already in the European Union, there is hope and a great chance that the joint experience will create a momentum for exchanging ideas among citizens, both EU an non-EU. Partners will strive to strongly motivate strengthening of European citizenship and to  reduce euroscepticism through discussions on the future of Europe, which is also one of the goals of the project. In addition, they will work together to increase citizen participation in decision-making through online activities, as well as through organising debates, competitions, advocacy initiatives etc, until the end of the project, that is February 2020.

During the two days of the kick off meeting, partners have spent a significant amount of time discussing effective ways of communicating with citizens in order to suport activism of as many citizens as possible and to provide a better understanding of EU policies and accession process. They have also agreed that it is important to show citizens that channels for communication with decision makers exist and that it presents a good start towards citizens' greater participation.

At the end of the meeting, the foundation of future co-operation was laid, which will lead towards realization of the project's core - empowered European citizens who are motivated to debate, with increased knowledge and good practices for combating euroscepticism.

The YOU4EU project is supported with Europe for Citizens programme of the European Union.