Online simulation game "Our Community" from 3 to 6 November 2020 - Kosovo and North-Macedonia

On 3 November, the simulation game "Our Community" began for about 20 students from Kosovo or Northern Macedonia. A fictitious city called Futura is undergoing political upheaval and the task of the participants is to arrive at overall political decisions despite increasing differentiation.

After the introduction on the first day, the second day started with methods of democracy and its basic values. Already there, lively discussions of the participants developed and different views were shared.

In this simulation, each participant played either the representative of a party, a particular lobby group or a representative of the media. The first step was to get to know the interests of the other parties but also of the lobby groups. For this purpose, party programmes and lobby programmes were designed and presented. The media was always present and in regular press conferences there were heated but constructive discussions. However, the tragic and sudden death of the mayor put the politicians of Futura to a whole new test. Now it was time to come to an agreement and find common views. In various coalition talks the parties of Futura finally managed to form a coalition. After this nerve-racking merger, the coalition managed to win the election for the new mayor of Futura. With this election and many new promises for the future of Futura the simulation ended on 6 November.

The participants were thoroughly grateful for the enriching experience of these four days. The political discussion and putting the participants in a new role was very successful overall and so there were lively discussions and in the end one had the feeling of having changed something. However, the complexity of local political decisions was also highlighted and awareness was raised of how complicated it is to reach agreement in the real political world.

The event was organised by the CIVIC-Institute in cooperation with the Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung and the Wilfried Martens Centre. Special thanks at this point go to the KAS branch office in Pristina for the organisation of the participants on site.