(… so you think you know it all?)

A European awareness project in support of the EU’s Structured Dialogue with young people

 ”… so you think you know it all?” is part of Eurodesk’s  strategy of communicating with young people about why the EU is important to them, what opportunities exist in Europe for young people and to encourage any young people to make their views heard at European level.

The European Commission is very keen to listen to all young people and has a number of current initiatives to support this process, in particular the Structured Dialogue.  Eurodesk aims to back up the Commission’s European policy initiatives by working at a local level with its Eurodesk Relays and others to talk directly with ordinary young people about their views on the EU, thereby raising the visibility of these EU policies and of the many EU opportunities for young people.

Eurodesk Relays are already working locally with young people and European information throughout the EU, and this initiative has developed new methodologies and materials to provide a coherent and co-ordinated framework to support this work in the future.

”… so you think you know it all?” was an ambitious pilot project  which  ran more than 75 local European Awareness sessions with up to 2000 young people in 12 EU countries in the last quarter of 2007 and the beginning of 2008! Following on from the success of the pilot, the initiative is being mainstreamed within the Eurodesk network wherever possible.

Each European Awareness session involves 20-25 young people, from schools, youth organisations and other local youth structures, in looking at their own communities to find evidence of the impact of the EU and to discover the many ways of communicating about European issues. The sessions end by encouraging the young participants to take some action to ‘talk to Europe’.

Young people will benefit from being better informed about Europe and the opportunities of European citizenship, while the professionals involved will develop new skills and gain new experience from using this approach, which will bring a new dimension into their work at local level.

European awareness Module outline

The European Awareness module has been designed to be used for short sessions of about 1 hour, so that it might suit most school programmes. However, feedback from the pilot project suggests that the optimum time is two school lessons giving around 1.5 – 2 hours with the young people.  Each module ideally involves 20-25 young people (target age 16-20 years) from schools, youth organisations and other local youth structures, but the session has also been implemented successfully with 80 young people working in groups.

 

The Module encourages the young participants to look at their own communities to find evidence of the impact of the EU and discuss the many ways of communicating about European issues. The sessions will end by encouraging the young participants to take some positive action to ‘talk to the EU’.

 

Detailed tutor’s notes on suggested methodologies and materials are included together with the necessary participant’s materials in a Support Package.

 

The non-formal methodologies to be used in delivering the module will involve the participants working in groups, having plenary and group discussions, some individual working and plenary inputs from the module tutor.

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The basic content of the ”… so you think you know it all?” European Awareness module is presented below: 

Introduction ·         Outline the initiative  and the role of Eurodesk in providing European information for young people; 1.      What do you know about Europe? ·         Begin with the participants’ own knowledge and experience of Europe – using some informal methods and fun materials; ·         In discussion, explore the visibility of the EU policy and actions at national/local levels; 2.      EU and young people ·         Show the EU Commission’s recent achievements as presented on the Commission’s Europa server; ·         Discuss how this relates to young people and if young people have other important issues; ·         Present the opportunities for young people in the EU; ·         And outline the sources of EU information available for young people;

3.    EU Youth Policy ·         Introduce the EU’s consultative approach to youth policy and its communication strategies; 4.       Your move … ·         Explore the communication channels available for young people to express their views; ·         Discuss the participants’ views on EU issues and how can young people have their say in the EU? ·         Agree some ‘interaction with the EU’ with the participants to complete the module. ·       Gather agreed information feedback from the session for online submission.