Civic participation is often perceived as a complicated and rather dull concept associated with elections, laws, and politics. Yet in the school workshops led by Ingūna Semule, the topic becomes engaging and meaningful because children do not simply learn about participation—they experience it themselves.
Her work with children and young people is based on the belief that participation begins with everyday decisions, and that the feeling of being heard can make a profound difference. It gives young people the confidence to get involved, express their views, and take an active role in situations they encounter throughout their lives.
The association represented by Ingūna Semule, LOBS, is one of the organisations delivering educational activities to schools across Latvia. During the current school year alone, it offers more than 480 thematic workshops for children and young people.
These activities are part of the project “STEM and Civic Participation Activities for a Broader Educational Experience and Career Choice,” implemented by the State Education Development Agency (VIAA). The project brings together science centres, companies, and non-governmental organisations to provide educational experiences on a wide range of topics. Schools and pre-schools can select activities that best suit their needs, whether in nature, workplaces, research laboratories, or directly at their educational institution.
Creating opportunities for meaningful youth engagement
LOBS was founded in 2015 when Ingūna and her husband decided to create an organisation where ideas in non-formal youth education could be implemented efficiently, flexibly, and with a strong focus on quality.
Before establishing their own organisation, Ingūna often encountered situations where creative and genuinely valuable youth initiatives became stalled in lengthy approval processes and bureaucracy.
“I have always enjoyed taking initiative, writing projects, and leading different processes. But very often, every idea required endless coordination. By creating our own association, we were able to work much more efficiently and focus on what matters most—working with young people,” she explains.
The organisation’s primary focus is supporting young people in rural and border regions by strengthening their skills, understanding of civic participation, and ability to take responsibility for their decisions.
Over the years, LOBS has become a member organisation of the Latvian Youth Council, participated in national and regional projects, and now delivers civic participation workshops through the VIAA initiative.
From active student to youth mentor
For Ingūna, working with young people was a natural career choice.
Her journey began as an active member of her school’s student council. Over time, this involvement evolved into a professional career in youth work, a field in which she has now worked for more than a decade.
Alongside the civic participation workshops, Ingūna works at Rēzekne State Gymnasium No. 1, where she leads an extracurricular project management programme for secondary school students. She also works at the Austrumlatgale Creative Services Centre “Zeimuļs,” helping young people develop their ideas and transform them into concrete initiatives.
For Ingūna, it is important that young people feel their ideas are taken seriously. She believes adults should not rush to make decisions on behalf of young people, but rather support them by helping them explore possibilities, ask questions, and find solutions together.
As an example, she describes situations where young people propose highly ambitious projects that initially appear unrealistic due to limited budgets or time constraints.
“Often an adult’s first instinct is to say: ‘No, that’s impossible.’ But if you say that immediately, you can extinguish a young person’s enthusiasm before it has a chance to grow,” she says.
Instead, when faced with ambitious ideas, she encourages young people to adapt, rethink, and explore alternatives.
“In those situations, I gently explain that I cannot guarantee everything will happen exactly as planned, but we can try and think together. And that process itself is incredibly valuable for a young person.”
Civic participation through experience rather than theory
In Ingūna’s workshops, children and young people do not merely hear about democracy—they experience it firsthand.
Each session begins with something familiar and understandable to the participants. Younger children learn how to agree on common rules, choose activities, and vote for games, experiencing the concept of majority decision-making in practice.
Primary school students explore the difference between facts and opinions through movement-based activities and discussions before progressing to simple voting exercises.
For lower and upper secondary school students, the workshops become full-scale election simulations. The classroom is transformed into a polling station complete with ballot boxes, voting papers, and campaign programmes that participants analyse before casting their votes.
Afterwards, the students count the votes together and discuss why making a choice was easy or difficult, how majority decisions emerge, and what happens when the outcome differs from their personal preference.
“Simulation games allow young people to experience the process themselves rather than simply hearing about it. They vote, count the ballots, and see how results are formed. As a result, when they participate in real elections later in life, it is no longer their first encounter with the process. That reduces uncertainty and anxiety,” Ingūna explains.
Learning from discussion and reflection
An equally important part of the workshops takes place after the voting has finished.
Participants discuss how easy or difficult it was to make a decision, whether their choices were influenced by others, and how it feels when the majority chooses something different from what they personally supported.
“It is always important for me to stop after the vote and talk. Why was it easy or difficult to choose? Why were there doubts? Often young people themselves realise that their decision was influenced by friends or group opinion. Then we discuss it openly—because that is exactly how things work in the adult world too,” she says.
Through these conversations, many participants realise for the first time that decision-making is often much more complex than it initially appears. When they take time to analyse options and make informed choices rather than simply following others, they begin to appreciate the responsibilities that come with participation.
“Many students admit that those who didn’t really think deeply found the choice easy. Meanwhile, those who carefully read, analysed, and compared options realised how complex the process actually is,” Ingūna notes.
Another important lesson concerns a fundamental principle of democracy: your preferred option will not always win.
Discussions about disappointment, acceptance, and implementing collective decisions help young people understand how democratic participation functions in real life and how to navigate it constructively.
Meeting young people where they are
For Ingūna, successful youth work means meeting young people where they actually are rather than expecting them to come to adults.
Her experience shows that children remain highly open to participation until around the fifth or sixth grade. During adolescence, engagement often decreases—not because young people are indifferent, but because existing opportunities fail to reach them in meaningful ways.
“If we want to achieve something in youth work, we should not wait for young people to come to us—we need to go to them,” she says.
As an example, she highlights Europe Day activities organised during school breaks, which engaged a far wider audience than traditional events held in assembly halls.
Why participation matters
Ingūna’s motivation for working in youth development and education comes from her belief that the feeling of being able to influence what happens around us is fundamental—both in school and beyond.
“If we believe we cannot influence anything, we lose the motivation to act. But the moment a young person experiences that their participation genuinely matters, everything changes. Confidence grows, responsibility develops, and they begin to believe in themselves,” she says.
This story was created with the support of the European Union Funds.
