B-Part: Engage and Be Part of European Citizenship

This project emerged from the observation of 3 distinct but complementary realities: 1) generalized alienation from public matters (indifference, unaccountability and abstention); 2) the gap between school and youngsters; and 3) the unfinished work of promoting social acceptance of different forms of diversity. B-Part intended to address the need for promoting participation, civic engagement, as well as the values of democracy, diversity and freedom and collective responsibility among the new generations, while using engaging child-centred educational techniques, used in non-formal education. The selected target group were children between 8 and 12 years old, attending schools in disadvantaged areas, to promote inclusion and access to opportunities, namely the ones offered by the Erasmus+ program.

B-Part had 3 main goals: 1) to introduce innovative and engaging child-centred educational approaches in formal education, in such a way that such approach and techniques would be acquired by teachers for a sustainable and independent use in the future; 2) to promote the development of student’s key-competences like critical and creative thinking, conflict resolution, active listening, empathy and other social skills, in order to bring up more responsible, aware and inclusive people, responsive to social challenges; 3) to introduce emotional education in schools curricula-delivery.

The project included the following four main stages: 1) diagnosis; 2) co-creation of the workshops with teachers; 3) workshops delivery; 4) evaluation, building collaborative networks and good practices share. For a more adequate intervention, the project started with an assessment of what and how has been worked on in the school subjects of Citizenship (Portugal) and Social Empathy & Responsibility (Greece), students appropriation of concepts and skills, as well as an auscultation of teachers and students’ suggestions to improve the school life experience. This was followed by co-designing thematic workshops alongside the participant teachers, regarding emotional education, civic engagement and inclusion. The third activity was the highlight of the project, consisting on the workshops' delivery to students through interactive and reflection-based learning methodologies. After, a new assessment was to both teachers and students was made and a good practices toolkit and paper were produced and disseminated. Also, during the project implementation, a mobility between both Portuguese and Greek participating organisations took place for mutual learning and share.

This project resulted in the performance of 102 workshops, delivered to 714 students and the direct involvement of 35 teachers and 12 schools, in Portugal and Greece together. The project 2 year experience, work and learning was materialized in a paper and a toolkit entitled Good Practices in Citizenship Education, available online for free in three languages, in the projects' website, which also promotes other tools and resources. The toolkit contains not only 15 thematic workshops, 13 of which are original, in the fields of emotional education, empathy, online safety, racism, stereotypes, diversity in the family, civic and democratic participation, Children's Rights, child slavery, bullying, inclusion and conflict resolution. The toolkit also includes a facilitation guide on non-formal education techniques, specifically on the Experiential Learning Model, directed at teachers and a citizenship glossary directed at children. Finally, a final conference was held in each country, to disseminate the project results and launch collaborative networks.