ACTIon brings together six partners from four EU (BE, BG, DE, GR) and one non-EU (MK) countries with vast ranges of complementary expertise in education, (digital) participation and network cooperation. Our purpose is to promote active citizenship through civic education and active e-participation of youth role models from socially disadvantaged groups.

To this end, ACTIon will adapt two innovative good practices that utilise offline and online training models and tools, piloting these in formal and non-formal, community-based education settings in four of the partner countries.

The benchmark of the approach is highly innovative: participatory engagement of adolescents and young people from socially underprivileged regions, ethnic minority/Roma youth and young migrants/refugees that experience the greatest barriers in terms of social inclusion in the fields of health and general education, the labour market and public life.

The project’s immediate beneficiaries will be roughly 100-120 young leaders trained as role models during the piloting phase, 50-60 of which according the Popular Opinion Leader (POL) model. The trained POLs will have the capacity to reach a further 300 to 500 community peers from their immediate social environment and networks. Around 120 youth activists are expected to become engaged with education e-participation projects through the online tool and digital appliance (App).

The expected impact is that active and deliberate digital youth participation will help strengthen the resources of young disadvantaged learners, newly-coming migrants and Roma/ethnic minority communities, empowering them to engage in pro-active social (online) participation through self-organised piloting projects with the digital tool. Ultimately, the results of this project will inform practice-driven policy recommendations, targeted at a European level to support policy advocacy for social inclusion through (digital) citizenship education.

More information you will find here.

Duration: 01/2021 bis 01/2024
Client: Funding Program: EU Program Erasmus+ (Key Action 3: Support for Policy Reforms)
Team: Tzvetina Arsova Netzelmann (project management), Dr. Katja Aue
Partner: Partners from five European countries: Belgium, Bulgaria, Germany, Greece, North Macedonia

Foto: John Schnobrich / Unsplash