News

Polish youth joining YOUROPE and leading the research

February 2025

From November 2024 to the beginning of February 2025, at the University of Lodz, the biggest university in central Poland, the partners of the Yourope project worked with the first groups of students according to the Community-led Research and Action (CLRA) methodology,.

During the CLRA period, 10 groups of students were formed, each containing between 6 and 15 participants. A total of 112 students took part in the activities. Each group of students worked in a different community, expanding the reach of the Yourope project. The students themselves selected the focus and aim of the process, underlying a core value of the project: that processes should be led by those they affect.

During the above period, the students’ tasks included:

  1. Conducting a literature review on the selected topics
  2. Conducting research within the community they have chosen (the most frequently used method was the interview, but one group used the observation technique in combination with drawing as a creative research method)
  3. Analysing the collected data 
  4. Developing an improvement plan or implementation of small improvement actions together with representatives of the researched community.

The partners were impressed with the creativity and diligence of the student participants in conducting their research and are looking forward to future findings and post-CLRA developments.