Corruption and undue influences are not only linked to democratic discontent but compromise the quality of democracy. But how exactly does political corruption operate today? How deep can its negative impact on democracy go? And how can anti-corruption efforts recover people’s support for democracy as a regime and promote their engagement with integrity and their refusal of undemocratic proposals and actions? To address these crucial challenges for democracy, RESPOND proposes a novel interdisciplinary assessment of political corruption, seen here as conducts and acts, often proliferating in grey zones regarding legality, that results in decision-making bias and exclusion in the policy cycle. It does so by: 1) analyzing four contemporary and relevant forms of political influence (political finance, lobbying, revolving doors/personal ties and media capture) to understand when they become troubling forms of influences connected to specific political corruption patterns; hence, undermining fair competition and broad participation in political decision-making processes; 2) evaluating how political corruption is understood by political elites and citizens and is socially constructed through media and education, as well as its impacts on both democracy’s legitimacy and credibility and on responses to counter them; 3) exploring how established and emerging digital technologies entangle with political corruption and how they improve anti-corruption and pro-integrity strategies at both national and cross-border levels; 4) engaging in co-creation with relevant stakeholders to design, test, and revise practices and tools, including new risk indicators developed by RESPOND, to increase civic monitoring and integrity in current democracies. Through a mixed-method research design, RESPOND investigates 27 EU countries and 11 neighbouring countries to signal ways to make governments, public officials, and political parties perform better ethically and recover democracy’s popularity.

<< Objectives >>The project is aimed at creating and fostering opportunities of knowledge sharing on social cohesion, democracy, intercultural understanding and inclusivity, with the aim to support social development in marginalised areas. The project also has the objective of developing strategic tools and methodologies to enhance youth workers’ social and professional skills in the field of youth involvement and social engagement, also increasing their capacity to operate jointly at a transnational level<< Implementation >>The project’s activities are designed in order to allow the fulfillment of the objectives. These are: Mapping of solidarity efforts in the field of youth based on cooperation and active citizenship (WP2); creation of a Youth Community Engagement Model - Humanness Toolkit (WP3); organisation of a School of Active Citizenship for youth workers in Uganda (WP4). Consortium will also deal with: Project Management (WP1); Humanness Communication Campaign (WP5); Monitoring and Evaluation Action(WP6).<< Results >>The objectives are meant to be achieved through the following concrete results: R1 - A comprehensive mapping of youth-related active citizenship initiatives promoted by grassroots movements and CSOs in the field of youth work and community development; R2 - The Humanness Toolkit, a freely available tool providing information and practical notions to youth workers and other stakeholders about youth engagement; R3 - Uganda School for Active Citizenship; R4 - The Humanness Communication Campaign.

<< Objectives >>MoMoEU aims to:- Enhance the cooperation within the cross-sectoral and transnational partnership- Provide YWs with simplified and immediately accessible resources for non-formal digital education on culture of integrity and on community-based monitoring- Provide YWs with immersive, interactive and collaborative non-formal educational digital tools on the same topics- Increase capacities of YWs in engaging and empowering youth on active citizenship against corruption through digital tools<< Implementation >>- 3 staff meetings: Kick-off and Partnership Training; Stop-Over; Touch-Down- Ideation, production and technical implementation of 1 online educational path and 2 educational escape rooms on integrity education and community-based monitoring, available in 7 languages (DE, EN, ES, FR, IT, LT, MZ)- Piloting and validation of digital outputs in 2 Transnational Digital Training with invited youth workers- 6 local trainings for youth workers in MoMoEU partner countries- 1 virtual Multiplier Event<< Results >>- Produced quality online educational path on integrity education and community-based monitoring- Increased accessibility, usability and outreach of the non-formal education methodologies of the project- Developed innovative educational escape rooms on the project topics- Developed impactful and engaging activities employing the educational escape games- Improved skills and competences of youth workers in supporting young monitoring citizens in Europe and specifically in partner countries

"The You Monitor project brings together anti-corruption and youth organisations to support community-based anti-corruption action. Coherently with the provisions of UNCAC and the EU Youth Strategy 2019-2027, the project supports quality youth work on civic anti-corruption and community-based monitoring, that includes the cross-disciplinary facets of:- civic engagement;- culture of integrity;- social cohesion and justice;- Right to Know;- Freedom of Information;- care of the Common Good;- participation to democratic life. The project recognises monitorial communities as the best bottom-up anti-corruption contributions and supports capacity building of youth workers, who are often keen on addressing these issues, but lack of expertise on such complex topics and are left with little to no material specifically designed for their audience.SPECIFIC OBJECTIVE AND METHODYou Monitor will develop an innovative, cross-sectorial and non-formal educational method (the You Monitor toolkit), produced together by CSOs partners and usable by youth workers. This will help engage and empower young people in civic anti-corruption (promoting a culture of integrity and developing monitorial communities).The You Monitor toolkit will:- create 3 simplified guides and 3 educational tools;- be open-licensed, in 4 languages, replicable and re-usable, modifiable according to needs;- adopt 5 different methods: informative, theatrical/experiential and ethical dilemma approaches; role-playing; campaigning techniques.You Monitor will outperform frontal lessons on corruption, which often focus only on regulatory aspects, are not accessible to youth and have poor impact. RESULTS AND ACTIVITIESThe 3 expected results are:R1 – Increased capability of youth workers to explain to, empower and engage youth in handling the entrusted power, positively managing conflict of interests and using their Right to Know. Coherently, the activities will be:- Kick-off staff meeting: Leipzig, Feb ‘21;- 3 intellectual outputs (IOs): ""How to monitor yourself against corruption"" - guide; ""How to recognize your entrusted power & manage your conflict of interests"" - tool; ""How to use your right to know"" – guide;- a training session “You Monitor yourself against corruption”, Turin, Oct ‘21, to finalise and test with a first group of YWs the IOs produced. R2 – Acquired capability to support and empower youth engaging in community-based monitoring activities/initiatives. Coherently, the activities will be:- Stop-over staff meeting: Marseille, Nov ‘21;- 3 IOs: ""How to monitor the common good"" - guide; ""How to spread the culture of integrity & create a community-based monitoring campaign"" - tool; ""How to manage a monitorial community"" - educational game;- a training session “You Monitor the common good”, Berlin, July ‘22, to finalise and test, with a first group of YWs, the produced IOs. R3 – Increased dissemination of civic key competences for community-based monitoring and active citizenship against corruption in EU and, specifically, in partners' countries. The R3 work package includes:- Touch down staff meeting, Turin, Sept ’22;- an external communication strategy throughout the project;- 3 multiplier events;- follow-up actions. PARTICIPANTSYou Monitor involves 2 key types of participants:1. Partners' staffSix organisations from France, Germany, Italy (mafianeindanke e.V.; Eine Welt e.V.; Gruppo Abele; Libera; DeMains Libres; Échanges et Partenariat) will create together the You Monitor toolkit, under the supervision of the University of Pisa.For each partner will participate:- 1 project manager;- 1 expert in anti-corruption or related fields or a youth worker, involved in IOs production. 2. Youth Workers (main beneficiaries)- 12 YWs belonging to the partners involved in the two Training Sessions, to assess the relevance and replicability of the You Monitor toolkit;- up to 300 YWs involved in the 3 multiplier events.With You Monitor, youth workers will be provided with an innovative non-formal educational toolkit specifically targeted for their audience and will test how to use it with young people during two dedicated training sessions. They will be encouraged to lead international exchanges between YWs and young monitorial citizens, and develop other educational tools inspired by the You Monitor toolkit. Partner CSOs will have new tools for awareness-raising, training and empowerment of youth on civic anti-corruption that can be directly used at local, national and EU level. They will expand a network of stakeholders interested in employing the project outcomes, both local youth workers and public authorities. Finally, in the medium-long term, thanks to training based on You Monitor IOs, youth as our final beneficiaries will be offered opportunities and tools necessary to become young anti-corruption activists and leaders, promoting the culture of integrity and anti-corruption campaigns at local/national/EU level."

The turn to illiberalism, often combined with anti-European rhetoric, represents a serious threat to the European Union. With most of the research focused on Poland and Hungary, the emergence of illiberal trends in other countries, including Slovenia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Turkey, and Italy, has often been neglected. To fill this gap, the SOS4democracy project aims to create an alliance of research and higher-education institutions, civil society associations, and a private news media organization to develop effective training programs for enhancing research on the recent turn to authoritarian systems in South-Eastern Europe. In line with the working program, the project will pursue three major objectives. Firstly, the project will strengthen cooperation and improve research and innovation ecosystems in academic and non-academic organizations by developing a training-through-research program to equip researchers, journalists, and civil society activists with the conceptual and methodological tools needed to explore the impact of illiberal measures in the participating countries. The training-through-research program will be carried out during secondments involving 31 staff members. Secondly, to ensure the transfer of know-how between the academic and non-academic sectors, the project will develop the following training programs: the academic sector will provide training on advanced research methods and practical skills, the news media organization will provide media training, while non-governmental organizations will provide training on civic monitoring mechanisms, public advocacy, and the use of new technology in civil society organizing. The extensive transfer of know how will be carried out on secondments, in-person networking events, and webinars. Thirdly, to improve the overall R&I capacity of all participating organizations, the project will organize a training program on research management, knowledge brokering, data stewardship, and knowledge transfer.