Over the past 50 years, Vienna has developed from a shrinking and ageing city into a young and growing one.  In 2019, 29.5% of the voting age population were not allowed to vote due to lack of Austrian citizenship and 1 in every 5 citizens was under 19 years old. Therefore, it became crucial for the City to create meaningful participation opportunities for everyone.

Enabling children and young people to experience democracy in a positive, hands-on way by showing them that their opinions and ideas matter, creates a feeling of self-efficacy. Small-scale participation opportunities, such as micro-budgets for specific projects or local re-design processes of a playground, exist in Vienna. However, with Werkstadt Junges Wien, the city is aiming for a more structural, long-term, and large-scale approach. The key objective is to prioritize the inclusion of all children and young people in Vienna at the heart of policymaking and city administration.

The consultation process was launched in February 2019 after holding extensive stakeholder interviews. A workshop concept was designed to ensure a child- and youth-friendly approach. All materials needed for the Werkstadt Junges Wien workshops were compiled in a toolbox which also contained a facilitator’s guide. The toolbox was provided to schools, kindergartens, after-school care clubs, socio-educational group homes, adult education facilities, youth organizations and other associations working with and for children and young people in Vienna.

Through Werkstadt Junges Wien, a strategy with 193 specific measures in nine thematic areas, based on the expressed wishes, suggestions and priorities of children and young people has been developed. This strategy was agreed upon by the Vienna City Council and thus is a binding commitment for the whole city.

It provides a clear road map for improvements to be made in the coming 5 years. The process brought about a new awareness for the interests of children and young people in all parts of the city’s administration.

The City is in the process of implementing a monitoring system for the 193 measures described in the strategy, which will allow politicians, children and young people to track their progress. The   diverse array of indicators includes providing a number of new water fountains in public spaces to a more participatory culture in schools. The project coordination team will collect all relevant data and make it accessible in a child- and youth-friendly way.

In addition to the monitoring system, a children and youth parliament is being established that will share the task of monitoring the implementation of the strategy with the city’s independent office of child and youth advocacy. Among the defined measures are some strategic instruments that foster the continuous involvement of children and young people via youth mainstreaming, youth budgeting or youth advisory board systems for city departments.

The City Council provided the budget for the development of facilitation material, the analysis of results and the production of strategy documents. Additionally, there was a large number of working hours invested by partners, who helped to promote the process, facilitate workshops, report results, collect measures for all nine topics and many other actions that supported the project. 

• 1,309 workshops with 22,581 children and young people (51.7% male, 48.2% female, 0.1% other)
• 56 workshops for children and youth with disabilities
• 1,000 educators (youth and social workers, teachers and volunteers) participated actively as workshop facilitators
• 70 departments and enterprises of the City were involved.

The innovative process enabled children and young people of all age groups and backgrounds to connect to the process.

All participants, their families, and their communities will benefit from the outcomes and the measures undertaken to implement the strategy.

The City of Vienna is reviewing initiatives from all policy areas, departments and enterprises of the city and aligning them with the vision of making the Vienna a better place for all children and young people. Some Departments need to learn and gain experience on how to address younger target groups.

The project demonstrates that the City administration and other adults can learn from dialogue and collaboration with young people. The workshops not only empowered children and young people they also empowered the city government and administration. At first, children and young people were asked to think about their city, but in the end, the city is now thinking about how to include children and young people in their planning and decision-making processes. There is an entirely new awareness that goes beyond the conventional ideas of democracy.

By building on existing relationships of trust, it was possible to include children and young people from diverse backgrounds in the project. This was achieved by developing partnerships with kindergartens, schools, youth workers, youth organisations, special needs interest groups and diverse departments of the City Council. 

The adopted Children and Youth Strategy contains measures that aim at the long-term sustainability of the changes such as the children and youth mainstreaming procedure. Further efforts will include the development of a child and youth budgeting initiative and preparing guidelines for reviewing all budget estimates and their relevance to children and young people.

The project team has begun to share their learnings from the project and reflect on the challenges to support other cities who are interested in entering into dialogue with their youngest residents. The strategy and educational material are available in English and can be downloaded and used for free.

Young Vienna Workshop: https://werkstadt.junges.wien.gv.at/
The Vienna Children and Youth Strategy 2020 - 2025:
https://werkstadt.junges.wien.gv.at/wp-content/uploads/sites/48/2020/09/The-Vienna-Children-and-Youth-Strategy.pdf