According to Bielsko-Biała Local Government statistics, the local population is ageing. Hence, most of the existing provisions and programmes focus on senior citizens. Youth programmes are confined to sports and some support for formal education. There has been no thorough diagnosis of issues relevant to young people, which would be essential for any meaningful strategy. Middle and high school students account for 15 per cent of the local population.
In the long term, the project aimed at giving young people in Bielska-Białej a chance to voice their concerns in public. The project has launched the RedakcjaBB magazine and website which have become a youth debate platform for sharing issues and ideas in Bielsko-Biała. Moreover, the RedakcjaBB office was open 5 days a week and turned into a meeting point for local youth.
Sixty young individuals have been trained to create media communications during about 200 hours of workshops, consultations and four study visits to professional magazines. Two issues of RedakcjaBB have been developed and published (1,500 copies each); they have reached 3,000 readers and over 13,000 online users. The website www.redakcjaBB.pl recorded 57,000 impressions and more than 14,000 users between December 2014 and January 2016. The project targeted youth in the Bielsko-Biała area.
The partnership around the project helped widen the spectrum of issues addressed publicly by young journalists. Hate speech prevention was addressed in stories written in English in partnership with Anglo-American University in Prague and the human rights stories were written in conjunction with the Montaż Association.