The project "Europe(an) matters - a survey on attitudes towards the EU and its institutions" aims at tracing people's views on and expectations towards the EU. To this end, partner schools from Italy, Spain, Romania and Germany are working together. The idea for this project arose from the increasing number of EU-critical voices that are to be heard in many different countries and in different levels of society, with the views being held by younger and older citizens alike. Many people reproach the EU for being too bureaucratic, too abstract or too far away from the citizens. Others mainly see it as an economic entity in which one should make sure to get the most out of it, or they feel that the existence of the EU is a threat to a country's sovereignty. EU-criticism has seen such an increase that it has already led to the creation of a counter-movement, the "Pulse of Europe" movement. With our project, we would like to draw our pupils' attention to the fact that being part of the Union does make a difference for everybody, and that we all tremendously benefit from the achievements. To this end, they will in a first step do a research on the politics and history of the EU (webquest) and then use their findings to compile a survey which they will carry out with a number of people in their home countries. Possible groups to be interviewed are elderly people who have lived through the (cold) war, business men who value trade simplifications, migrants from within and outside the EU who wish for protection and (economic) security and randomly chosen people in the street. We also plan to use the Internet for online voting. The diversity of the countries involved allows for a number of different topics, e.g. youth unemployment, EU migrants, refugees, founding members versus recent members etc. Doing the interviews will confront the pupils also with more critical views on the EU which they will then be able to assess on the basis of their prior research. They might also find out about justified criticism which will spark a discussion about possible solutions and make them interested in getting actively involved. The students will also produce video clips to highlight the benefits and advantages of the EU to be shown on the website. After this comprehensive view on the EU, the pupils will be given the opportunity to meet people working in this field. We aim at organising a panel discussion with the local EU-representative and other politicians at the occasion of the final meeting in Stolberg. This meeting will also include a visit to Brussels and the EU institutions to get a more concrete idea of this complex subject matter. In the course of the project, the pupils will acquire a number of relevant skills to deal with this complex task. They include the theoretical knowledge about the compilation of questionnaires, communicative skills necessary to do an interview with strangers, and the ability to assess the reliability of their sources to tell fake news from serious reporting. Moreover, we are going to include various IT-skills such as working with statistics, visualisation of results, setting up computer-based presentations, designing a homepage, doing video-conferences with the partners, programming an online survey etc. By training these skills, we hope to prepare them better for their professional future and to raise their interest in IT skills. We also aim at pointing out the practical relevance of the skills they learn in school for real-life projects. We also intend to produce CLIL teaching material to be used in the bilingual streams of our schools. This CLIL material can deal with language skills needed to to surveys, but it can also stem from the initial research phase and put a focus on political bodies. This material is supposed to be used in class afterwards and to be presented in regional meetings of CLIL teachers. The results of the project will be made available to the people participating in the survey. Moreover, the results will be published on the project homepage with tags so that they can be retrieved by search engines. We will also contact local newspapers, chambers of commerce, NGOs concerned with migrants' needs, local authorities and universities to spread our results. As to the selection of pupils, the schools have chosen either the approach of running the project as a work group that is to meet regularly outside school, or they implement it in a regular class as for example a course on European politics and economics. The pupils will be 14 or 15 when starting the project. On finishing the project, most of them will have turned 16 and will thus be entitled to vote in the 2019 EU election. By raising the pupils' awareness for the workings of the EU and by drawing their attention to both the benefits and the challenges that lie ahead, we aim at helping them develop a sense of active citizenship and get involved in shaping their future, e.g. by joining an NGO etc.
From our point of view, we could largely achieve the goals we had set ourselves in the proposal, namely acquisition of knowledge about the EU and its workings, appreciation for the benefits and achievements of the EU, enhancing of IT skills and language skills and knowledge of other cultures and ways of life. The evaluations carried out among the participants (see results published on the Erasmus+ Dissemination Platform). All together, around each school sent 2 teachers and six pupils to each of the AULs, to which we must add the participants of the project who worked "on site", but did not travel. The mobilities granted by Erasmus+ were all done by pupils aged 14 to 17 and their teachers. The participants came from quite heterogeneous backgrounds, ranging from affluent to difficult economic situations which, however, did not play a role in the project and was not noticeable at all. All in all, we organised a meeting at each of the partner schools as had been scheduled in the proposal. All the activities planned (work on webquest, doing filmclips, evaluation of the survey and insight into political decision-making processes along with excursions to thematically relevant sites such as the European Parliament in Brussels or visits of NGOs helping migrants' issues or agricultural businesses receiving EU-subsidies) could be carried out as outlined in the proposal, with the exception of a re-arrangement of the schedule due to organisational matters (see below). In-between the meetings, the participants were in close contact, working together to prepare the topics of the next meeting and deepening their new friendships. This was done via eTwinning, but also with the help of other social platforms such as Facebook or whatsapp. The teachers involved in the project are very satisfied with the results achieved and the commitment shown by the participants, with our expectations being more than met in some respects. We were not only impressed with the efficiency and the flexibility the participants showed when doing and further developing the tasks given, but also with their way of integrating prior knowledge meaningfully in the project. "Tangible" results range from various webquests, glossaries for a number of topics and a survey questionnaire to creative outputs like logo-design, videoclips and memes. Concerning the attitudes and values among the youth, we could witness a growing awareness of the European idea, its realisation on the political and social levels and the concrete effect it has on the participants' lives. Finally, the youth were able to name and hold dear the benefits the EU holds for them. Moreover, the meetings were characterised by an open atmosphere among the participants who were eager to get to know the others and their ways of life.This impression was corroborated be the host families who mostly considered the one-week stay of their guest as a benefit for their family. Also in terms of language, all participants have been able to deepen their knowledge of English and learn some words in the languages of the partners.