TALLINN CITY YOUTH COUNCIL

Tallinn City Youth Council (further Council) is youth representative body of the Tallinn City Council as the higher decision-making institution of the Tallinn municipality. The aim of the Council is to represent the city youth and stand for their rights and interests.

The legal statute of the Council is adopted by the Tallinn City Council and gives the right to monitor, cooperate with and address suggestions to all of the municipality institutions. The Council consists of 21 young person aged 14-26, who are elected each year democratically once a year on the last week of October. There are three electoral groups and each of them chooses 7 representatives to the Council. The groups are pupils, students and youth NGO-s. Furthermore, so called NEET-s, who clarify the age limit can also nominate themselves in the electoral group of NGO-s. In pupils and students groups heads of Tallinn schools and universities student boards have one voice each. Each youth NGO recognized by the Tallinn Youth Department has the right to vote on the elections.

The Council was finally founded in 2011 and has been preceded by several pilot-projects. There are committees and working groups in the Council, the 3-member board is managing the work of Council. It is important to suppress that all the members of the council are volunteers and are not paid for their activities. The Council is funded mainly by the Tallinn Youth Department; a part of the budget comes via projects.

The Council elects one representative (with the right to vote) to the Committee on Cultural and Educational Affairs of The Tallinn City Council. In addition, Council members are participating in the work of at least 7 City Government committees and working groups according to the topics of discussion. This system is quite new for Tallinn and unique for the whole Estonian local municipality system.

Among the last themes and topics the Council has been lobbying in the city are: creation of an-extreme sport park (accomplished), creation the possibilities of legal graffiti (accomplished), changing the system of Tallinn school directors election (in process), introduction of nightly public transport (in process).