Edgeryders is a joint project of the Council of Europe and the European Commission. It is meant as a diverse, constructive interaction channel between European young people and  democratic institutions, and designed along the principle of Internet-enabled massive open collaboration.

Its goal is to produce a shared vision of how Europe’s young citizens could claim a stronger influence on our common future – and a larger share of the social responsibility that goes with it.

Structured as an online social network/game, Edgeryders poses a number of questions to participants, from describing the challenges they face in securing a job to talking about their experience in the educational sector. The collection of stories and inter-linked comments that participants leave on each others’ pages will paint a vast and complex picture of the challenges faced by young people today, and of the resilience, imagination and creativity they are displaying when trying to solve them.

This picture will form the basis of a never-attempted before exercise in participatory policy-making: co-writing a Handbook for policy-makers on how to improve Europe’s response to the needs and hopes of young people today.

There is also a short video that explains the project through various examples :

Now I would like to share some great things that are keeping me working harder and harder everyday.

For this first post, I want to share a talk from TEDxConcorde on a subject that really matters for me : diversity. A real homage for fighting against adversity, Hamou Bouakkaz who is since 2008 deputy mayor of Paris in charge of local democracy. In english the talk is called : Blind, Arab and Citizen.