Introduction
As our democracies are put to the test, no democratic system can remain healthy without the participation from active citizens. Young people are the future of Europe, yet they are amongst the hardest to reach.
Context
The growing importance of the European Union for policy making shines a spotlight on the need for European Citizenship Education. Active European Citizenship requires an understanding of how politics works on the European level. At the same time, educational programs in this field do not reach enough young people.
In this context, the Green European Foundation worked together with the Robert Bosch Stiftung and the Bosch Alumni Network throughout 2020 to prepare and organise the Education on Europe Conference, a two-day, online conference for Educators on European issues set to take place in January 2021. The Conference aimed to create a space to discover and try out new approaches to make European politics, identity and values more accessible and approachable for difficult to reach target groups.
About the project
Besides selecting participants for the conference in 2020, a series of three podcasts on ‘Education on Europe’ was launched at the end of 2020. The podcast explored together with experts the following questions: What efforts to reach and educate young Europeans are working and what efforts are failing and why? How can European issues be made more accessible to those young people with little affinity to Europe? What new and innovative approaches to make European integration and EU politics more accessible to learners should be developed and implemented?
