Our team’s interest was working with the youth of Paide as we learned, that young people in Paide lack hangout spots and thus kill their time in parks and parking lots without much meaning to the time spent with their peers. We were interested in changing this around and creating an inspiring and exciting environment, where young people could feel empowered.

Through our several meet-ups with the young people of Paide, we eventually realised that designing something to fulfil their free time in a more meaningful way would still not be sufficient, as large portions of their days are spent within the educational system. Not only are they at school five times a week, but they also have homework during the evening and at weekends. This realisation lead us to rethink the educational system.

Stemming from the idea, that high school education is not mandatory in Estonia, we decided to get rid of high school entirely. Our proposal- P/areng- introduces a vision of gaining knowledge that relies on the initiative and empowerment of youth, thus enabling them to adapt more fluently to an independent life in the society. The aim of our vision is to enable each young person to find their life’s calling. This is achieved through a physically, emotionally and mentally supportive environment, where young people are encouraged to discover their interests, work towards their goals and constantly develop their skills and knowledge to ultimately find their passion in life.

Our vision has been created with having youth empowerment and the idea “Youth is the present” in mind, but we see an opportunity here to applying this vision to the overall community, where people of all ages can join and be a part of the system, whether they need support themselves or wish to offer support to others.

Team: Evelin Ebruk, Markus Lukk, Lisett Mitendorf, Cätlyn Tamm.