Workshop 2

Short-term exchange of pupils groups on the European Youth Parliament topic. The leading organization Askim Videregående Skole organized the meeting in Norway (18.11.2019 – 22.1.2019). 4 students (8 from NO) + 2 (3 from NO) accompanying persons from each partner school participated.

During this activity, the students learned about the European Youth Parliament methodology, which includes:

• to organize democratic assemblies,

• to debate in international meetings,

• how to present a political issue\up to date topic,

• how to find solutions to political issues,

• voting for the best solutions,

• to write political documents and resolutions.

We started with teambuilding activities to prepare the students for working in international groups. The students learned to perform as delegates and were divided into committees with members from each country participating. In these committees, they learned to perform\play different roles to turn the committee consisting of individuals into a team. The international groups developed from ice-breaking participants to solution makers of complicated problem-solving. The delegates analyzed the topic of their committee, identified the problems surrounding it, and discussed solutions to these issues. The output of the committee work was a written resolution. After that, there was a general assembly in which all the committees came together to present and debate the resolutions they wrote in each group. At this general assembly, all the resolutions were put to the vote. There were 4 main subtopics:

• fashion,

• food consumption,

• plastic pollution,

• carbon-free mobility.

Expert knowledge about the methodology and contribution of experience was arranged with help from the Norwegian EYP organization. To supervise and guide the students in the committees, we had the advantage of involving one chairman in each committee with prior experience from the EYP work. Furthermore, the project teachers from the countries involved were assigned as mentors for the committees to ensure a high level of academic learning. Furthermore, politicians and city council representatives, both adults and youth politicians, attended the workshop and taught the students about their work and experience. We included round table discussions with politicians. The students learned about debate techniques and how to present and form solutions to political issues. Finally, they learned to make the content and structure of resolutions.

Besides project work, we organized both social and cultural learning:

• • We visited the Norwegian Parliament (Stortinget), and a member of parliament gave us a guided tour. She introduced the structure of the political work and its history and opened up questions related to democracy\political work as a politician.

  • We also visited the 22. July exhibition center in Oslo related to the terrible terror attack in Norway. This exhibition emphasizes the importance of democracy in contrast to the extremism in the world. To contribute to cultural learning about art, we visited two famous sights, Gustav Vigeland's park and the Opera house in Oslo.

  • We must stress the positive importance of the hosting arrangement, where students lived in fellow students' homes.