Youth Dialogue Forum 2025 (YDF 25) is a complex deliberative process for youth in Slovakia, Czechia, Poland and Hungary that combines CivTech tools with live deliberations. Through gamification, innovation and decentralization YDF engages people on community, national and international levels - all that in one synchronized forum that demonstrably empowers the disempowered and engages the disengaged.
The project is co-financed by the governments of Czechia, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia through Visegrad Grants from the International Visegrad Fund. The mission of the fund is to advance ideas for sustainable regional cooperation in Central Europe.
About YDF 25
One of the pillars of participatory democracy is that there are no lazy or disengaged citizens, just badly designed games (participatory processes). This idea was proved in the last iteration of YDF, where even disengaged youth participated in the whole forum and found it meaningful. In the light of the chicken-egg problem, the solution in creating innovative and engaging procesess of participatory and deliberative democracy is particularly powerful.
Goals of YDF 25
Creating a successful deliberative forum that engages youth from V4 countries and continues to prove the need and meaningfulness of democratic innovations. Project sub-goals are:
- Involving 40 Ambassadors of YDF (10 for each V4 country)
- Involving 2000 youth participants in 2 digital DEMDIS discussion modules of YDF which will be held synchronously in Slovakia, Czechia, Poland and Hungary.
- Involving 30 participants from V4 countries in the live deliberative weekend event.
- 120 000 Young People reached through the continuous social media campaing (mainly on Meta platforms)
- Creating a complex report of the forum.
Project timeline
Project Coordinator
DEMDIS OZ
Michal Horský, director of DEMDIS
Project partners
- Fundacja Folkowisko (Poland)
- Hungarian Youth Association (Hungary)
- Budweis – European Capital of Culture 2028 (Czechia)
