When democracy regains its original meaning
“It’s crazy that we have to say participatory democracy, when democracy should already mean that,” jokes Thomas Egli, 50 years old, founder of the NGO Objectif Sciences International (OSI), which he created at the age of 17 in 1992.
This science enthusiast turned citizen trainer saw from the beginning a contradiction in our institutions: a democracy drifting away from its citizens, participation exhausted by representativity, and active citizenship constrained by verticality.
The Participatory Science Hackathons (see description) , organized with Step and Go, reverse this logic. Here, deliberative democracy, shared governance, active citizenship, and intergenerational collaboration are no longer empty words. They are daily practices—lived, discussed, sometimes chaotic—but deeply transformative.
“We wanted to do real scientific research, not just discovery activities,” explains Thomas Egli. “The difference between pretending to participate and experiencing real participation is at the heart of the current democratic problem.”
Science for all, democracy for everyone
It all started with a science club, which became a global network recognized by the UN for its participatory science, social innovation, ecological transition, and citizen diplomacy projects.
Today, these hackathons bring together teachers, researchers, artisans, 12-year-old children, 16-year-old teenagers, retirees, farmers, electronics students from Bahrain, biologists, and journalists from France Inter or committed podcasts.
This social, geographical, cultural, and professional diversity reflects a dynamic social and solidarity economy — an ecosystem where social justice, diversity, inclusion, pluralism, and mutual accountability become democratic levers as powerful as voting.
| “At each hackathon, we ask participants to identify their superpowers,” says Chloé Larose. “Then to look for those who complement them. It’s like a miniature society: everyone needs the skills of others. That’s where real collective intelligence is born.” |
Participants experience learning by doing.
They face real cooperation scenarios: making joint decisions, resolving disagreements, designing a scientific method with non-specialists. These are micro-experiences of collaborative democracy and environmental governance, but also of dialogue culture, active listening, and social mediation.
A microcosm of society: between utopia and complexity
| In a lecture hall at the University of Nice, at the end of a hackathon, children present their ethical drone observation project. Beside them: an acoustics researcher, a mountain guide, a teacher, and an electronics engineer from Bahrain. Applause masks the emotion — it’s a small victory for applied deliberative democracy. |
For Thomas Egli, “learning to participate is learning to confront.”
Each hackathon becomes a laboratory of governance sciences and complexity sciences.
One must negotiate, persuade, listen, delegate — and sometimes fail.
“There’s always one group that blows up,” he says, smiling. “We know it in advance, we spot it, we ‘nurture’ it. That’s democratic life: it’s learned through friction, not artificial consensus.”
These frictions reveal the root causes of a democracy that is “not participatory enough”:
the lack of civic education, the centralization of power, the administrative complexity, the digital divide, economic insecurity, mistrust, individualism, and the lack of recognition.
But they also reveal their remedies: transparency, collaboration, accountability, popular education, civic training, and local solidarity.
Concrete projects, real impacts
The outcomes are measured both in learning and social transformation.
Each session generates 5 to 10 concrete projects: citizen observatories of biodiversity, technical prototypes, cultural actions, or educational campaigns.
| In Kinshasa, for example, a partnership between OSI and a cultural festival on the Congo River brought together more than 180 children over three years. Together, they conducted research on water quality and the restoration of river ecosystems. This participatory environmental governance project mobilized embassies, universities, and local associations, creating genuine community resilience. |
“At first,” recalls Chloé Larose, “we were told it was impossible to involve children in scientific research. Three years later, they were leading their own investigations.”
In Nice, another project left a mark: “Wheels for Ocean”, initiated by a teenage girl.
She decided to cycle from the Alps to the Mediterranean, collecting environmental data and raising awareness in schools along the way.
This project, both educational, ecological, and emotional, illustrates the power of citizen empowerment and capacity building: when people are given the tools, anything becomes possible.
3 to 10 immersive days
An intensive 3- to 10-day training, depending on the version, where participants learn in real-life settings to co-create participatory science projects.
30 to 80 participants per session
Children, teenagers, researchers, teachers, engineers, artists, entrepreneurs, and engaged citizens, brought together around a shared goal: learning by doing.
180 children mobilized on the Congo River
An emblematic project carried out in Kinshasa over the past three years, involving schools, embassies, and local associations in restoring the river ecosystem.
Wheels for Ocean
A 13-year-old girl rides her bike from the Alps to the Mediterranean to raise awareness about marine protection and collect environmental data.
+1000 engaged alumni
A global community of former participants who now create, train, and support new citizen projects, strengthening active citizenship and local resilience.
International partnerships
Collaborations with universities, embassies, and public institutions to turn learning into concrete policies and strengthen shared governance on a global scale.
Learn, transmit, transform
The hackathons don’t stop at the end of the session.
Participants join a community of over a thousand “alumni” — a networked active citizenship, a learning community that embodies participatory foresight and intergenerational participation.
Isabelle Milhomme confirms:
“People leave transformed. They realize they know how to do things, that they can teach, that they have a role. It’s a pedagogy of transformation.”
Evaluation is done through rubrics, mind maps, and cross self-assessments.
It measures knowledge and skills, but also soft skills: listening, cooperation, initiative, co-decision, emotional regulation, and kindness.
These invisible yet essential competencies are key to any shared governance or economic democracy.
Barriers to participation: between inertia and innovation
But the road is long.
Institutions often remain rigid, and representative democracy is still wary of direct participation.
Administrative complexity discourages initiatives.
The digital divide continues to exclude too many citizens from civic tech and open data tools.
And individualism erodes civic bonds.
Thomas Egli warns:
“If you give power too quickly without tools, you create chaos. If you support people step by step, you reach impressive levels of collective intelligence.”
Solutions lie in social innovation, decentralized governance, participatory budgets, action research, open government, crowdfunding, cooperative governance, and above all in active citizenship education from an early age.
Democracy and economy: cooperation as a driving force
| During a hackathon in Auvergne, a mixed team composed of a guide, a teacher, and a lab director invented a local wildlife monitoring system using sensors co-developed with residents. The project was later adopted by a biotechnology company as a cooperative startup. |
This convergence between participation and innovation has tangible economic effects.
Projects create jobs, stimulate local ecosystems, and inspire models of participatory corporate governance and social responsibility.
They embody economic democracy: redistribution of decision-making power, inclusion of employees, and creation of collective value.
Participatory science thus becomes a lever for ecological transition, territorial autonomy, economic resilience, and systemic transformation.
Culture, rights, and symbolism: participation as a way of life
The hackathons also serve as a school of democratic culture.
Participants rediscover the importance of the right to public information, the right to speak, and the right to citizen initiative.
They explore participatory arts, public communication, and citizen journalism.
They learn the political philosophy of the common good, human rights, and the rights of Nature and future generations.
Through debates, songs, slam poetry, laughter, and disagreements, they weave a culture of dialogue, an ethic of cooperation, and an intercultural collective intelligence.
Toward a learning and resilient society
The Participatory Science Hackathons don’t just teach participation — they put it into action.
They turn mistrust into trust, abstention into action, disinformation into shared knowledge, and the crisis of legitimacy into collective ownership.
They respond point by point to the consequences of an insufficiently participatory democracy:
to the crisis of institutional trust, they offer transparency;
to individualism, they respond with cooperation;
to social fragmentation, with community solidarity;
to political inefficiency, with the co-creation of public policies;
to civic disengagement, with participatory mobilization.
A societal project for the decade ahead
“What we’re building,” concludes Thomas Egli, “is a society where everyone regains their power to act. A society that learns to decide, to co-produce, to correct its mistakes together. The next phase of democracy isn’t to talk about it — it’s to do it.”
These hackathons embody a vision: that of a living, inclusive, cooperative, digital, ethical, and sustainable democracy.
A democracy where collective intelligence, citizen participation, open science, and shared governance become the pillars of a learning society — capable of solving its own complex problems, without waiting on top-down solutions.
| In other words: making democracy more participatory means giving people back the ability to invent their future. And, in the process, giving science, the economy, and society a shared engine: cooperation. |
