Existing research in Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Croatia indicates continued apathy and lack of interest among young people to become more actively involved in their communities. The reasons are various: from distrust in political figures and the belief that they cannot influence decision-making processes due to lack of transparency and lack of dialogue in the development of public youth policies (strategies, action plans, etc.), to the lack of experience of young people in ensuring an equal place in political and social dialogues due to their lack of knowledge and skills that they can apply in practice. Therefore, it is important to improve the dialogue between young people and institutions and to give young people the opportunity to participate equally in shaping the life of their local communities.

That's why the Arka Foundation from Belgrade, the Association Delta from Rijeka and the SANCHILD Foundation from Sarajevo launched a new Erasmus+ project "Youth Dialogue Pioneers in Southeast Europe (SEE)", whose goal is to empower young people from Serbia, Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina to become the initiators of change and dialogue in their communities, through analytical and critical thinking, use of digital tools and by launching advocacy initiatives towards decision-makers.

The project will consist of the following activities:

• Training for young pioneers and youth workers, through which we will include over 15 young people from 3 countries,
• Local advocacy initiatives in three countries, in which young people will apply the acquired knowledge and skills from the training,
• The final conference on dialogue with young people, where we will present the results and reward the best-implemented initiatives in the project.

In addition, during the project, we will launch an informal network of youth dialogue pioneers in the region, which will be an online community of young leaders and initiators of change as well as a digital space for learning, exchange and joint action in the field of active youth participation, democracy and dialogue with institutions.

The "Youth Dialogue Pioneers in SEE" project started in November 2022 and will last until October 2023. The project is financed with the support of the European Commission. The contents of the project reflect the views of the authors and the Commission cannot be held responsible for any use of the information contained therein.