Europe@Home: European Civic Education through the mobile

Background The COVID-19 pandemic affected many aspects of people's lives in Europe, especially young people and youth organisations, who could not carry out most of their activities, and therefore their missions. However, young people have shown a real capacity to adapt to the online format by using new tools and platforms. Despite this, it soon became apparent that the implementation of online activities required real facilitation skills and careful consideration of the objectives, opportunities and constraints that the online format might have for the implementation of non-formal education activities. This is why the consortium decided to gather existing resources on digital education, in particular regarding European civic education, from and for young people. In addition of this research work, a survey was also carried out to highlight good practices in terms of use of digital tools. Furthermore, based on a multi-level and transnational approach through the different seminar and training activities, the consortium developed a toolkit with 20 online tools, ready to be implemented, as well as guidelines and a facilitation methodology for conducting and facilitating an online activity with young people within the Europe@School programme. Objectives The project "Europe@Home: European Civic Education through the mobile" aimed to examine and further develop the digital education practices that have been put in place in the wake of the Coronavirus pandemic, with a particular focus on European Civic Education. The objectives of the project were: -To examine the opportunities for the implementation of European Civic Education through online educational platforms and study the approaches taken by different youth organisations during the COVID-19 pandemics and similar challenges in the past. This was to be done by means of desk research and an empirical study addressing youth organisations all over Europe, reflecting on the learnings to derive at useful conclusions. - To adapt a set of existing and create new non-formal European Civic Education tools for online use and create new activities to educate young persons on different European topics and issues. - To implement online European Civic Education activities at the local level in coordination with activities at the European level and collect lessons learnt, implementing them into the manual. - To offer space for learning and networking between different youth organisations from the local to European level. Implementation The activities implemented during the project were the following: - 3 Transnational Project Meetings, one online & two analogue, in Liége and Malta, (+ large number of SPMs and Coordination Meetings) - Intellectual Output 1: survey and desk research - Intellectual Output 2: Creation and development of the manual: Europe@Home - European Civic Education through the mobile - C1 Seminar in Paris: Europe@Home - Opportunities and Challenges: gathering 21 experienced participants to develop online activities and a plan of action for the dissemination and online tryout webinars that were later implemented by the participants - C2 Training for multipliers in Berlin: gathering 22 participants to build their capacities as well as improve the tools and contents of the manual and plan out actions for the multipliers events for IO1 and IO2 - 5 multiplier events: 4 multiplier events in Malta, Bulgaria, Germany and Belgium presenting the manual and discussing online education opportunities and the role of youth organisations to promote it. - 1 online multiplier event (non-funded) by JEF France to promote the IOs to local coordinators of the Europe@School programme. Other events of the sections were used to disseminate project result Achievements The concrete outputs developed during the project are: - IO1: “Research study - Digital education tools - Opportunities VS Practice”. The study is based on state-of-the-art research, which provided a theoretical framework. It takes the reader on a journey that aims to elucidate the critical points in the design, implementation and evaluation of digital learning activities or more sophisticated protocols, with a particular focus on how digital methodologies, approaches to learning and tools can be applied in the area of European Civic Education. - IO2: "Europe@Home: Manual for European Civic Education Online." The manual was developed to: • Support the work of youth organisations, such as JEF Member Organisations and OBESSU, on European Civic Education, whilst also being relevant to youth centers, schools, and more generally non-formal education practitioners, • Increase the quality of online activities implemented by youth organisations on European Civic Education, • Create, compile and tailor activities to bring out their online potential. The diverse experiences and contextual settings of the partners created outputs that are accessible and adaptable to different European realities.