Citizenship lessons in schools in Lithuania were often lectures related to history, national identity and politics and didn’t relate to the everyday lives of young people. I 2011 Youth Academy Lithuania set out to change this with the project Open Code Citizen.

The first part of the project was a campaign in Lithuanian schools. This started with a training course for young people where they learned to identify issues for young people in their local community and develop ideas for how to address these issues. Over 1500 students took part in the workshops.

Next young people where invited to join a special Facebook profile where they could register the problems they had identified and other young people could vote for them and offer solutions.

Following on from this 39 citizenship initiatives made by over 700 young people have been created. The initiatives cover a wide range of activities. Young people have organised concerts for young bands, started school magazines, decorated space in the school with graffiti, renovated the local bus station, arranged concerts in children's homes and old people’s homes, made and sold crafts to raise money to help a friends father who was seriously ill, arranged historical expeditions to find the places where historicsl events important to Lithuania have happened.

The efforts of the young people were celebrated with an awards ceremony – complete with red carpet!

To support long term change in citizenship education in schools 400 teachers and youth workers took part in a training course. Topics covered included “National identity”, “Democratic values”, “Social solidarity”, “Respect for diversity” (Tolerance). These teachers and youth workers are now using this knowledge in their work with young people. A publication was produced alongside the training course to be a resource for teachers and youth workers in the future.