Stepping Stones (2025)

Stepping Stones is a co-creative project to foster democracy implemented in collaboration with school students from Viennese middle schools. The starting point of the project is based on the claim made by young people in the DOCKforChange project to have adults listen to children and involve them in decision-making.
Stepping Stones aims to actively involve young people in democratic participation processes and offers them the opportunity to raise issues and concerns important to them. With this project, the Vienna University Children’s Office is taking yet another step towards diversity of representation, empowering young people and providing support to actively participate in civil society processes – with a particular focus on young people in Austria who are not allowed to vote and are often unheard or excluded from (democratic) political discussions.
In the DOCK Dialogues, young people share their issues with stakeholders from science, politics, business and the media, and jointly develop ideas, approaches and the next steps to achieve their objectives.
Four Viennese middle school classes are directly involved in the project: There will be a total of two project cycles, in each of which two schools will jointly develop and plan their issues with the support of the project team and implement the DOCK Dialogue.
We are excited to collaborate with the following schools in the first cycle:

• MIM Wendtstattgasse
• MS Glasergasse

The schools participating in the second cycle will be announced soon, so stay tuned!

Interested in the project? Are you a stakeholder or would you like to find out more about the DOCK Dialogues? Stay informed via our newsletter or our social media channels. If you have any questions, please contact the project team led by Thomas Troy

The project is funded by CIVITATES – The European Democracy Fund. We are thrilled to be one of six projects selected in Austria!