Youth Placemaking Beyond Borders
Funding: European Union
Partners: STIPO Greece (Greece), BG Be Active (Bulgaria), EcoHub (Armenia), EcoVisio (Moldova)
Duration: 2025–2027
Project management: Bozhena Pelenska, Anastasia Danylchenko
Contact: office@insha-osvita.org
Youth Placemaking Beyond Borders is an international project implemented in 2025–2027 by a consortium of five organizations: STIPO Greece (Greece), BG Be Active (Bulgaria), EcoHub (Armenia), EcoVisio (Moldova), and Insha Osvita, with the support of the Erasmus+ programme and funding from the European Union.
The project aims to equip teenagers and young people from Ukraine, Armenia, and Moldova with practical tools to participate in the life of their cities and communities through work with public spaces. At its core is placemaking as a way to engage young people in decision-making, civic participation, and urban regeneration — combining hands-on work with physical spaces and digital engagement tools — the so-called phygital approach.
Young people in Ukraine and neighboring countries often lack access to decision-making processes and to safe, open public spaces. Public spaces frequently either do not function to their full potential or fail to take young people’s needs into account — and therefore do not become places of safety, encounter, and collective action. YPBB addresses these challenges by supporting young people as active agents of change and helping transform public spaces into sites of interaction and solidarity — especially in the context of crisis, war, and post-war recovery.
The project consists of several interconnected strands:
- Youth placemaking pilots — hands-on work with public spaces. In each country, local placemaking projects for teenagers and young people will take place. Participants will learn how to research spaces, mobilize support, build partnerships, and work with real, physical environments.
- Training and support for trainers. This strand includes workshops for trainers and facilitators working with young people, as well as the development of a methodological guide on phygital placemaking, combining spatial work, digital tools, and participatory approaches.
- Advocacy and dialogue with authorities — organizing youth dialogues involving representatives of local authorities, urban practitioners, and stakeholders.
- Mentorship and community — participants will have access to a community of like-minded peers, as well as mentoring support from professionals in the fields of urbanism and civic activism throughout the project period and beyond its completion.
In addition, Youth Placemaking Beyond Borders will include public focus groups and research into young people’s needs and the accessibility of public spaces. Based on the results, we will prepare — and of course share — a range of materials, from analytical reports to video stories.
The Youth Placemaking Beyond Borders (YPBB) project is funded by the European Union. The views and opinions expressed within the project are those of the authors only and do not necessarily reflect the views of the European Union or the EACEA.
