The construction of a youth policy with young people: possibilities and limits of a concrete experience

Abstract

This paper is a review of an empirical research on youth political participation, but it is also the report of experience of building a youth policy, together with the youths of a municipality of. In the years of 2013 and 2014. The question of the research was: o what extent it would be possible to construct a public policy with the involvement and the direct participation of the target public? The objective was to analyze the relations that are established in the construction of a public policy with the direct participation of the young people. The method is compatible with the research intervention, which involved the development of a map of youth in the city and used the procedures of the valuation to sensitize, articulate and mobilize more than 4 thousand young people aged 15 to 29 years in 92 cycles of dialogue, to reflect on their potentialities and raise priorities in the construction of specific policies, having as background the realization of a social pedagogy. In the process, leaders who presented to the public power a Youth Charter of the city, arrived at the Project Law for the creation of the Municipal Youth Council and a plan of action for the implementation of the Youth Statute, in the municipality.