Introduction. Public participation is an important element of modern democracy. One of the important challenges of pedagogy and family upbringing is to answer the question: what is the best way to prepare young citizens to be active in public life? Aim. The aim of the paper is to present the result of the own research project. The topic of the research was: how young people learn public participation. Another important issue was to relate the research results to the family context and answer the question: how useful are the results in the family upbringing? Method. Participatory action research was a method used in the research. Seven young people took part in the project. They interviewed their peers and cooperated with an author in working on findings and conclusions from the research. The theoretical framework of the project was Knud Illeris’ theory of learning. Results. The results showed three dimensions of learning public participation: cognitive, emotional, and social. Conclusions. Analysis of the results show the importance of the social environment and family upbringing in building young people’s capacity for public participation.