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Thank you again for signing up to receive regular updates on the YouCount project. With every newsletter, you learn more about YouCount and the people behind the project. We travel to one of our cases and introduce you to young citizen scientists and other project members in each issue. The newsletter informs you about upcoming events and updates you on those you might have missed. The past months, we've been very busy with different activities in the ten local cases and getting more experience in practising co-creative Citizen Social Science with our young co-researchers. Among others, YouCount members gathered for the Consortium Meeting in San Sebastian (Spain), celebrated the honorary mention of the European Union prize for Citizen Science and started to plan the final conference that will take place at the end of the year. Until then, the project will publish reports, scientific papers and blog posts on the resource section of our website. YouCount's next and last newsletter will be sent out after the final conference.
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Case Studies
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#1 Rural innovations in Hungary
One of our two Hungarian cases is located in Siklósbodony, a small village of 140 inhabitants in Southern Hungary, which has lost almost all its public institutions (the kindergarten, the local store, the post office) during the last two decades. Members of the research team are local young people who meet the typical difficulties in isolated rural settlements in the area: limited access to quality education, scarce job opportunities, high travel costs combined with law wages, and ethnic discrimination against the Roma. Research participants are now engaged in developing a socially innovative, sustainable agriculture farm which, beyond providing job opportunities, may also strengthen local community cohesion. In collaboration with bio-agriculture experts (Hungarian Permaculture Association), documentary filmmakers (ELTE Media Studies Department) and social scientists (Participatory Research Forum), the team intends to carry out a small-scale research program anchored in citizen social science to document and reflect the learnings in a co-creative way, and to identify the various social causes behind perceived success and failure during the innovation process. Read more about YouCount's cases here.
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Evaluation
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#2 Voices from Youth in the UK
This section focuses on evaluation. We ask YouCount youth across the nine countries about their experiences within the project. Our journey goes to Preston in the UK this time, where we talked with Lauren Thompson. What do you get out of being a part of YouCount?
“Being a part of YouCount has made me feel that young people are capable of making change, even though it feels like our voices go unheard too often. We are the people of the future and that’s why it is so important that we begin to make a change now. YouCount has given young people of Preston, like me, a platform for their voices to be heard and to really make a difference to the city that we live in. I have had the opportunity to meet and discuss with important stakeholders of Preston at UCLan’s Living Lab events. One of the topics that we focused on during this meeting was safety of young people in Preston. From discussions held about this issue, provisions have been put in place by the local police force to ensure that there is a safer environment for students travelling to and from college.” Which topics are most interesting for you in the project?
“The topic that interests me the most is safety. This is because once young people feel safe in their environment, only then can they begin to feel a sense of belonging in their community and begin to flourish. Being a part of YouCount has helped me understand that you can’t wait around for someone else to speak up - if you feel unsafe in your city or community, make your voice heard!" What should YouCount look at when it comes to social inclusion of youth?
"The main reason that young people feel socially excluded is the presumptions that many people have towards the youth of today, and their misunderstandings about our generation. The only way to change this is by having more open conversations within our communities in order to offer a different perspective.”
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Events
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#3 YouCount's network is steadily growing! We participate in seminars, conferences and workshops at both national and international level to present our project and become more visible. We are happy to share some of the highlights from the past months.
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Save the dates for our Final Conference 4-5 December
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We have started with preparations for our final conference! Block your calendars for December 4-5 where we will travel to Brussels to present findings, arrange discussions and an exhibition.
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...and before that: our final webinar
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On 28th of September, the final webinar by YouCount & ECSA WG EIE will take place. The webinar will focus on experiences from setting up Y-CSS in practice. More information will be shared on our website soon.
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YouCount travels to US for C*Sci23 conference
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Cathrine Winther, Ph.D. student at the Aalborg University in Copenhagen who also leads the Danish YouCount case, represented YouCount at the C*Sci23 conference in Phoenix, USA. Cathrine participated with her poster "Co-creating youth engaging strategies - Experiences from youth citizen social science approaches".
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Consortium Meeting
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YouCount participants gathered for the Consortium Meeting in San Sebastian, Spain. We discussed findings related to social inclusion, social innovation and evaluation as well as our experiences with hands-on Youth Citizen Social Science. Our young citizen scientists interviewed eleven researchers coming from eight countries on their main takeaways, published on the blog. You can meet the young citizen scientists in this video.
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Oslo exhibition UNGfluencer
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YouCount’s Oslo team visualised their findings in form of an interactive exhibition at the Intercultural Museum last month. The exhibition UNGfluencer shows how young people are included in society through access to work. Based on evidence, the team consisting of researchers at the Work Research Institute of OsloMet and young people connected to the district Gamle Oslo has developed 7 criteria for socially inclusive youth jobs. UNGfluencer will travel to other destinations in Norway.
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First Citizen Science Twitter Conference during CS month
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April 1 is not only about pranks. This year it was the day for the first ever Citizen Science Twitter Conference. Numerous projects tweeted three things about their Citizen Science work at noon in their local time zone and YouCount was one of them. The conference was organised during the Citizen Science month – announced by the European Research Executive Agency (REA) who presented us as one of several CS projects.
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News
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#4 A lot is happening in YouCount and its project members are busy documenting these processes. We were quite active on our blog and resource page where we reported by now on almost all cases. Our Early Career Researchers campaign on LinkedIn is also still up and running – So check out what you’ve missed! Below you find both recent publications as well as project news:
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EU Citizen Science Prize
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For the first time, the EU awarded prizes to outstanding citizen science projects that promote a collaborative, sustainable and fair future. YouCount, together with 27 others, was recognised with an honorary mention of the EU Citizen Science Prize - a new award organised by Ars Electronica Austria. In the case of YouCount, the jury noted that "the project addresses one of the most complex social challenges facing Europe, how to increase the social inclusion of young people, by involving young citizen scientists as co-researchers in all phases of the research”.
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YouCount App
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We organised a joined data collection effort across several countries during our App week. New observations by young citizen scientists in Europe were registered in our App run by Spotteron. Download the App and contribute to research by identifying opportunities for young people to take part in society.
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Sweden: Social inclusion through civic engagement
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Can civil-society engagement function as a driver for other forms of social inclusion for young people? And if so, can we identify important drivers for enabling more young people to engage in civil society? These questions lie at the heart of our Swedish YouCount case managed by Södertörn University and Vetenskap & Allmänhet, VA. Read more about the Swedish experience on our blog.
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How the Austrian team is letting young citizen scientists make important decisions
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The Austrian YouCount case explores political and civic engagement opportunities of young migrants in the country and aims to propose solutions. Our colleagues from University of Vienna organise workshops with young citizen scientists who themselves are living as migrants in Austria. You find more information here.
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Lithuania: Social inclusion through lenses of young citizen scientists
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In Lithuania, YouCount highlights the need to build social inclusion using citizen social science as a tool to mobilise young people to address social issues that are important for them and to create a sense of community belonging. The project aims not only to conduct research, but also to have a positive impact on society in general, and on the local community of the Panevėžys district, in particular. On our blog, you can read more about how the Lithuanian case is working.
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Intergenerational dialogue in first Living Lab by UK team
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Have you heard about the term Living Lab? It is a research approach to tackle problems by finding innovative ways. At the first Living Lab of the University of Central Lancashire, young citizen scientists and the university research team exchanged opinions with the Mayor of Preston, representatives of Citizens UK and health services professionals. We were discussing how to increase social belonging of young people. If you're curious about what we've learned and what's next, read our blog post.
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Articulating Voices of the Young...
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...How to bring youth into contemporary planning and governance? The article by Ann Mutvei and Tomas Kjellqvist from Södertörn University describes the experience of involving young people in two youth participatory research projects on political and social engagement – one of it YouCount. It presents problems identified by the young people in relation to their living environments and neighborhoods in the southern Stockholm region.
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Co-creating youth-friendly societies through CSS
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EU strategic documents emphasize the need to foster youth social inclusion, support youth citizenship and involvement in research and policy-making. YouCount seeks to show that Youth Citizen Social Science might be an effective and sustainable way to achieve these ambitions by proposing ten recommendations for decision-makers in the EU in this policy brief.
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Citizen Science in Hungary
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Alexandra Czeglédi, research fellow at the Environmental Social Science Research Group in Budapest, has recently published an article on Citizen Science (CS) initiatives in Hungary, particularly in the field of biology, ecology, agricultural science and urban science. The article maps CS in Hungary with YouCount as one project being part of this landscape and contributing to increased participation in science.
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Ten cases across nine countries
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Do you need a quick recap on what the YouCount project is actually about? There you go: Located in nine European countries, YouCount works to co-create new knowledge and innovations that increase social inclusion of youth across ten case studies. Each case focuses on youth who face different challenges linked to social inclusion. This way, we want to identify positive drivers for a more inclusive society with and for youth. YouCount will further evaluate how its co-creative approach based on citizen social science works out in practice – in each case as well as across cases. We see this evaluation itself as a co-creative process which starts right here. In every newsletter, we hear from youth how they are experiencing the project.
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Stay tuned and get in touch!
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Stay updated on developments and reach out to us by signing up to our community of interest, checking out our blog and following YouCount on social media:
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