Com’ON: participatory budgeting for youth

Com'ON is a participatory programme that enables young people to become more responsible, active and adaptive, providing a model for their peers while building trust and care in the community.  

The programme does this by helping young people identify and solve community challenges using improved social and life skills and practical experience. In turn, members of the community become more aware of young people's needs and challenges, more trustful towards them, and more involved in their actions. Meanwhile, partners and stakeholders cooperate and innovate, share resources and make evidence-based decisions in answering young people’s needs.

Overall, this practice encourages a social environment that is more inclusive, sustainable and more supportive towards young people. 

Com’ON is a youth wellbeing, learning and agency programme built on the principles of participatory budgeting. Practically, it provides financial support for informal groups of young people to propose and implement solutions addressing various needs and problems in the community. 

Under the slogan ‘Let’s Do Well Together’, the programme has supported over 1 000 small-scale initiatives through which young people have tackled community issues. Meanwhile over 50 000 individuals from the community have been involved in deciding which ideas are to be funded by the municipality. 

More recently, beyond the core participatory budgeting process, the programme has been enhanced through workshops, inspirational talks, and special mini editions in schools and neighbourhoods. There has also been an extended governance activity focusing on cross-sectorial approaches, inclusivity and equal opportunities.

Com’ON is one of the outcomes of the city of Cluj-Napoca’s hosting of the European Youth Capital in 2015. Com’ON has since become a core urban youth engagement platform. It is one of the 17 key initiatives which serve the Cluj for Youth 2030 metropolitan youth strategy, itself closely aligned with the overall development strategy of Cluj-Napoca for 2030, which includes a chapter on youth. Additionally, through these strategies Com’ON is also aligned with the Romanian National Youth Strategy and the European Youth Goals. 

The programme is implemented technically through a partnership between the Municipality of Cluj-Napoca, the PONT Group of professionals in social innovation with a special focus on youth, and the Cluj Youth Federation – the legacy organisation of Cluj-Napoca 2015 European Youth Capital. This co-management approach was a first in Romania. The municipality invested over EUR 550 000 of direct funding from its own resources.

A recent development in the programme is a focus on how it can become a laboratory of social innovation that helps young people become agents of change, improving wellbeing in their community. Meanwhile the surrounding ecosystem of institutions, organisations and companies create an enabling environment for their initiatives. For this purpose, a cross-sectorial and interdisciplinary board has been created, involving the municipality, youth organisations and professionals in the field of urban development, social innovation, business, education and health. Additionally, a special inclusion board has been set up to address the issues of inclusivity and equal opportunities in young people’s access to this participatory process. A series of valorisation workshops and creative labs also connect stakeholders, sharing various programme results with relevant programmes, initiatives and other city stakeholders. These workshops are a way to involve young people in co-designing and innovating the programme’s future. 

The programme’s overall approach builds on the Theory of Change, and in particular the relationship between three core stakeholder groups: young people, the community, and the local ecosystem of organisational and institutional stakeholders. 

Com’ON enables large-scale participation, with young people contributing ideas and proposing initiatives, and high numbers of citizens helping decide which initiatives are to be supported. In time, the programme’s initiatives and decision-making are set to involve over 3 000 young people, and over 50 000 other citizens.

Since its inception, the programme has involved young people and youth organisations in co-designing the process, alongside the municipality, expert groups and youth workers. This co-management was taken to further levels after the pandemic. 

Supporting creative ideation, the programme contains a series of interventions that allow young people to co-design parts of the programme directly which are then tested and incorporated into the wider process. These include mini editions and other youth engagement activities.

Beyond the partnership of the Municipality of Cluj-Napoca, the Cluj Youth Federation and PONT Group, enlarged institutional stakeholder engagement is enabled through multiple general and specific governance mechanisms. A general and inclusion board and a series of valorisation workshops enable the transfer of outputs and outcomes into a broader range of social innovation and urban development mechanisms. 

Among others, Com’ON is a factor of mobilisation and social innovation that contributes to the production of social capital and helps to increase the level of trust between communities living in Cluj-Napoca. It contributes to the thematisation and solution of youth problems in the city.  The programme mobilises young people, contributes to social integration, and indirectly produces social innovation – through original actions. Despite a relatively difficult path due to the pandemic, it has kept going year after year, providing much needed relief for young people who felt disengaged and disconnected from their peers and from the city. Com’ON emerged stronger, becoming institutionalised in 2022 and diversifying its offer to the local youth community.

These recommendations from the programme’s impact report help give an idea of differences being made now and in the future:  

• Continue the process of Com’ON’s institutionalisation and integration in the local community, with the support of local stakeholders; 
• Organise media events to communicate about Com’ON and help strengthen the identity of those connected with the phenomenon; 
• Create a Com’ON Cluj-Napoca Dictionary;
• Debate the moral dilemma of voting and help people understand the logic of the voting system.  

Com’ON Cluj-Napoca has become a consolidated brand; its meaning is equivalent to the meaning of participatory budgeting for youth.  

This practice empowers young people as core actors of an urban community, improving their future perspectives, including jobs, through better education, training, soft skills, and higher agency. This is particularly valuable in light of COVID-19’s impacts on young people across the EU.

Other cities can adapt this practice to their own needs if they retain its core elements. Certain principles must be respected, particularly youth engagement and co-management, broad governance, inclusivity and equal opportunities. It is also vital to support informal groups of young people and involve an external actor such as a youth council or a senior youth support organisation to facilitate the process.

Com’ON contributes to Sustainable Development Goals 11, 3, 10, 13 and 14. SDGs 16 and 17 also run through the process, with participation-at-scale, enlarged governance mechanisms and the co-management of public authorities and young people.

The practice aligns with the Urban Agenda for the EU, testing and innovating new local public, private and community funding mechanisms, as well as systemic efforts supporting young people.

Overall, Com’ON is made possible in Cluj-Napoca through Romanian laws on funding NGOs, and a law on awards that also supports the lottery. A group of members of the Romanian Parliament have been working towards introducing new legislation.

Additional Com’ON projects have been launched, in the cities of Sfântu Gheorghe (50 000 inhabitants) in 2019, and Satu Mare (120 000 inhabitants) in 2023, working with Cluj- Napoca’s partner, PONT Group.

The project also sparked a new ‘Com’ON Europe' white paper during an EU Erasmus+ cooperation with European Youth Capitals Braga (PT), Cascais (PT), Maribor (SI), Thessaloniki (EL), Varna (BG) and Turin (IT) in 2017-2019.

Cluj-Napoca is now ready to create a package of information tools to describe their methodology, from participatory processes and mechanisms to ways of engaging young people and capturing outcomes and impact.