Cities 4 YOUth Event in Poland (7th to 11th of June, 2025)
🌍 Cities 4 YOUth Mobility in Starachowice Work Package 3
📅 7–11 June 2025 | 📍 Starachowice, Poland
From June 7th to 11th, 2025, young participants from across Europe came together in Starachowice, Poland, for an enriching mobility under the Cities 4 YOUth (C4Y) project, co-funded by the CERV Programme. The event combined cultural discovery, civic education, and hands-on youth engagement activities.
Throughout the mobility, participants explored regional heritage, met with local authorities, and collaborated with peers in debates and creative workshops focused on building more youth-friendly and inclusive communities. The final day featured the C4Y Youth Festival — a celebration of ideas, diversity, and European citizenship.
👉 The full description of the implementation, including the active participation of the Cypriot team, is available below.
Day 1 – June 8, 2025
The day began by our grand return to the Centrum Kreatywności Pałacyk, the recently built youth center of Starachowice. Our time here was quite short, as we focused on introductions to the new groups with our new dynamics. To do so, we played some name games, human bingo, and non-verbal based games to learn about each other's features, such as the age, height and how many countries we have been to. This was kept short, because the next stop was the highlight of the day.
We visited the Park Legend Museum in Nowa SĹ‚upia to learn about the history of the area. This interactive museum, with audio, movies and more goes over the story of Emeryk, a legendary pilgrim who appears via hologram to guide visitors through the experience. The museum also covers the witches and the Sabbath on Bald Mountain, and the museum recreates the ritualistic gatherings and feel the eerie atmosphere of the haunted mountain using technology.
The last stop of the day was the Touristic Centre over Brody Lake, where we met youngsters, who spoke about the activities they host here for youth from all counties, which also allowed them to cover the issues youth face here, namely, the fact that each county doesn't necessarily have schools above primary school, meaning all youngsters from multiple counties visit a single one to continue their education. This merges well to the topic of the project, whereby we try to create communities much suited for youth's needs.
Day 2 – June 9, 2025
Day 2 of the project, and this one was filled with lots of new knowledge, on what is being done on youth in Starachowice. To start, we were visited by ElĹĽbieta Gralec, the 1st Deputy Mayor, in charge of Economic Affairs. Gralec covered all economic aspects of the town, including new aspects of the town, such as new housing being built to entice people to live in the town, new and updated bus stops, the updated bus station, and most importantly the rentable bikes around the city, costing 50 cents an hour, which have become a huge success. Gralec taught participants that these are crucial aspects of any town, and keeping up with modern trends provides growth to a city.
The second meeting was by the Youth City Council, run by youngsters, where we had a QA session with them. They talked about all sorts of projects they have been up to, as well as crucially thesignificant partnershipwithBergen in Norway they have, resulting in these participants visiting there numerous times. Speaking of which, our next stop was the Eco-school in Starachowice.
The Eco-school, which was a transformation of the already existing school "Szkoła Podstawowa nr 11". This project, funded by Norway grants, turned the school into a centre for ecological education, civic engagement, and community integration, resulting in the school looking exactly like schools in Norway do. The school is extremely high tech, featuring different forms of projectors, classes about ecology, as well as numerous projects surrounding it.
To end the day, groups were split into three. One, with leaders from which group, to discuss next steps, the second, groups preparing for the Oxford debate, and the third, a group playing trivia quiz to engage participants and prepare for the atmosphere for the youth festival after.
Day 3 - June 10, 2025 - The Youth Festival
The last day of the project, and ultimately, what work package 1, as well as what the previous 2 days were building up to, the C4Y Youth Festival in Starachowice.
Taking place in the cultural center of Starachowice (Park Kultury), and involving a huge audience of youngsters, the event was attended by numerous other organizations, as well as special appearances by the major of Starachowice, Marek Materek, as well as other key people such as Sylwester Kwiecień – Deputy Mayor and Elżbieta Gralec (whom we met previously)
This was also the place where the debate took place publicly, starring participants from all municipalities involved in this project. The day also involved Kahoot quizzes based on EU knowledge, singing, snacks, and different games taking place in the Park Kultury building concurrently. It was a day filled with lots of knowledge and lots of fun.