The Council of Europe today, during the closing session of the World Forum for Democracy, awarded its Democracy Innovation Award to Generation Democracy. The prize is a reward for efforts to get citizens more involved in public life and the democratic process.
The aim of Generation Democracy is to encourage education for democratic citizenship and human rights education in the Turkish education system. Pilot projects have been conducted in 22 schools spread across 10 provinces of Turkey in order to find an answer to the question: “What makes a school culture more democratic?”.
Seven initiatives were shortlisted for the final vote from the 30 or so presented during the Forum:
- Stork Heinar, a parody of Nazi ideology (Germany)
- Chabab 2012, the Circle of Young Democrats of Morocco
- the Alsace Youth Parliament
- the Blue Ribbon Movement (India), a leadership development programme
- Generation Democracy
- Youth Create Change, a local governance and civil society development programme in eleven municipalities of the West Bank and Gaza Strip
- Young Democracy Creators (France)