To strengthen young people’s connection to the EU’s democratic life by developing their civic competences and improving their understanding of how to apply them to participate more effectively, using innovative and hands-on methodologies.
Description of the project
EuroConnect stems from the need to address the growing challenges to democracy across Europe and identifies the strengthening of young people’s civic competences as a strategic way to do so. Civic competences are an essential factor for conscious democratic participation and for understanding the links between local issues and the European dimension as a space for their resolution. To achieve this, young people are calling for new, more practical, and bottom-up methods that deliver tangible results.
The project will respond to this need through their co-creative involvement in debates and course curriculum development, as well as through collaborative exchanges among institutions.
Objectives
- Address the common need of ensuring the youth gain a greater connection to the EU’s Democratic life.
- Develop students’ civic competences as a means to connect them to the EU’s democratic life and enable transformation and change.
- Give students more practical experiences when it comes to engaging with civic competence education.
- Enhance the links of collaborative learning between students, educators and civil society and build up the necessary capacities to form these links.
Activities
- Conduct a series of online events (EU issue debates, curriculum discussions, and discussion on local issues), in which students based at the different partner institutes can discuss key challenges and the role civic competences can play in addressing them.
- Implement workshops for secondary school students on the fundamentals of civic competences.
- Facilitate a collaborative exchange between project staff and students training to be teachers, to take the knowledge gained in the workshops for secondary school students and pass it on to a new generation of teachers.
- Co-design and carry out a collaborative project course in which groups of university students work together to develop their own solutions to local issues with European implications using civic competences.
Results
Resources
- Guidelines with methods, timeframeworks and procedures for the online debate events.
- Pre- and post-activity surveys to assess students’ development of civic competences and to inform the subsequent phases of the project.
- Framework for training and education on civic competences in secondary schools.
- Summaries that analyse experiences, knowledge and data gathered over the course of the online debate events and secondary school workshops.
- A syllabus listing key details for the implementation of the collaborative project course.
- A toolkit providing guidance for future educators and practitioners on how to replicate and expand on the project’s findings.
Impact
- 150 university students have strengthened key civic competences and understood how to use them to participate consciously and actively in democratic processes at both local and European levels.
- 90 to 180 secondary school students have developed knowledge and skills in key civic competences, including critical thinking, communication, collaboration, cultural awareness and respect.
- 5 pre-service teachers engaged in a collaborative exchange with project staff working in secondary schools have gained practical insights and methodologies for their future careers.
- 15 university students taking part in the collaborative project course have developed concrete, project-based European solutions to local issues.
Partners
- Coordinator: University of Tartu, Johan Skytte Institute of Political Studies, Estonia
- University of Siena, Italy
- Georg-August-Universitat Gottingen, Germany
- Centro per lo Sviluppo Creativo Danilo Dolci – ETS, Italy
