EU4You

Özet, Erasmus+ Project Results platformunda yayımlanan İngilizce metindir.

Amaç

In the recent years, as the nationalist and populist ideas are gaining momentum, hard Euroscepticism has been increasing at significant levels both within and outside EU, amongst countries such as France, Poland Hungary, Norway, Turkey, Serbia and undoubtedly, the UK. Especially with Brexit, the problem has turned into a critical one threatening the integrity of Europe. There is the fear that hard Eurosceptic movements will get stronger in the next years, eventually leading to the collapse of the European integration process.

This current picture leads European integration to being taken for granted in today’s world. In addition to being the biggest peace project for the continent after the World War II, the EU has made wide variety of policy changes possible which have significant impact in our daily lives, ranging from the freedom of movement within the EU to the right to public healthcare in any other EU member state, or the right to stand up and vote in the local elections.

To prevent any Brexit domino effect and tackle the root causes of populism and hard Eurosceptism, the partners in this project found it crucial to increase among young Europeans the knowledge, awareness and understanding on the importance of the EU.

Given that very often youth workers and young organizations themselves do not have sufficient knowledge, tools, methods and practices on the subject, the partners agreed on the following objectives:

1) To enhance the knowledge of youth workers participating in the project upon EU’s impact in our daily lives.
2) To enhance critical thinking and media literacy skills of youth workers;
3) To provide youth workers with tools and methods to raise awareness amongst the young people upon the importance of the EU and give them skills to decipher populist message
4) To foster cooperation between European organisations active the youth field in the promotion of the EU awareness and combating Euroscepticism.

Uygulama

The project consisted in one training course of 11 days that took place between the 3rd and 13th of December 2019 in Slettestrand, Denmark. The activity gathered 32 youth workers from the partner organisations participated, motivated to promote EU awareness amongst their local young people, but in need of acquiring methods and tools and strengthening their own understanding and knowledge upon EU evolution, priorities, processes within the EU and how it betters our daily life through its decisions and policies.

The participants were selected upon the following criteria:
– To be a trainer, facilitator or a peer to peer educators within the partner organisations desiring to develop their skills and competences on the themes of the training;
– To prove motivation to facilitate or support young people in increasing knowledge, awareness and understanding of the EU;
– To demonstrate a plan on will exploit the learning outcomes;
– To be able to communicate in English fluently.

Sonuçlar

The project enhanced the capacity of youth organizations and the competences of youth workers in promoting the EU awareness amongst young people, while contributing to combat populism and Euroscepticism. This equipped youth organizations and youth workers with knowledge, methods and tools to provide a higher quality of non-formal education to their young people.

The implementation of the project in its entirety contributed to the professional development of people working in the youth field – youth workers, youth organizations’ managers, project managers, project coordinators from the partner organisations. It also led to an enhanced cooperation between the partners and follow-up activities at European level to strengthen young people’s awareness upon the importance of EU.
Throughout the Training Course, participants were encouraged to reflect upon the impact of the EU, EU values and EU citizenship in their daily lives as well as to exchange ideas and opinions with each other during the activities. As a result, participants’ awareness and knowledge regarding the EU and the EU awareness increased.

A booklet containing methods applied during the Training Course was created by the partner organizations and published on Salto-Youth. In this way, other youth organizations across Europe can benefit from the training course by using as number of tested methods in their daily work.

Furthermore, participants gained a multicultural experience. They lived and worked together in mixed groups throughout the activities. They exchanged views, ideas, opinions and good practices in various topics. There was also an intercultural evening during the Training Course, in which participants presented their culture. As such, cultural awareness and expression of the participants were enhanced significantly. Trainers encouraged participants to actively engage in and contribute to the activities. In this way, participants’ sense of initiative, communication skills, self-confidence and social competences expended further.
Activities were designed for participants to work together. As such, participants developed a set of skills and competences such as active listening, working in a group, collaboration, discussion, conflict resolution, respect to and empathy towards others.

Participants during the Training Course gained a greater understanding of the EU, EU citizenship and the impact of the EU in their daily lives and the challenges the EU is facing. By being a part of this project, they, as EU citizens living in different parts of the EU, learnt from each other about different aspects and perspectives regarding the EU and EU citizenship. In the long term, this increased the awareness and knowledge of the participants are expected to increase interest in EU issues and solutions, thus leading them to become more active EU citizens.