The main goal of the project is to promote European education by empowering the existing, active European Clubs in Poland, Portugal and France to set up new European clubs in France Slovakia and Romania, where such concept has not been developed yet. European Clubs are informal groups of teachers and students interested in European Union, learning about different countries and cultures in Europe and international cooperation. Clubs are voluntary activities that schools offer to their students. Three partners in this project have been working with European clubs so far and see the need for strengthening the activities of the networks, enabling meetings of European clubs members and trainings for developing new skills and encouraging international and intercultural exchange. Each partner will take part in all project activities. They will participate in the blended trilateral mobility, involving a coaching process to help set up a new European clubs in France, Slovakia or Romania and conduct a series of activities in partnership with the new clubs. There are three main direct target groups of the project: NGOs which cooperate with schools and want to improve their activities promoting civic; school teachers leading European clubs, in particular, and teachers or youth workers willing to set up a new European club in their community; young people from 15-19 years of age who are actively involved in European clubs activities or are interested to learn more about the European Union. Young people in all stages will have an active role as partners, which will help develop their entrepreneurial competence by suggesting, making up, planning, implementing, promoting and evaluating activities within European clubs. Non-formal learning methods will be at the core of all project activities. A lot of focus will be put to group building activities, variety of group and individual working tasks, active participation of all participants using role-play, games, workshop sessions and intercultural exchange in the working process of all activities. The primary impact we expect is the improvement of European education in participating countries and the increase in European awareness amongst project participants. We aim to raise the level of activity of the young people and youth workers, members of European clubs involved in the project.
European Clubs appeared in Portugal in the 80’s in order to raise awareness about the entrance of the country in the EEC among the Portuguese population. Their functioning replicates the one of the UNESCO Clubs founded in the 60’s. Since then, European Clubs developed in several European countries, primarily in the countries that entered the European communities after the 80’s. European Clubs are groups of non-formal learning spontaneously constituted inside the school. The participants gather voluntarily in order to participate or set up activities revolving around a common interest for the European Union, the discovery of new cultures and countries and international cooperation. Each club is coordinated by one or several members of the pedagogical team of the school. The goal of the project is to raise awareness about European topics among secondary school pupils in order to galvanize former Polish and Portuguese European Clubs and help create new one in Romania, France and Slovakia where the concept is not well developed yet. The use of non formal learning methods is at the core of this initiative designed to supplement the education received in school by providing a European approach. Even if the Clubs are formed inside the school institution for most cases, they function as an extracurricular activity. The underlying goal is to directly involve students in their local community and help them becoming active and enlightened citizens. Within the framework of this project, we mainly worked with pupils from age 13 to 18 years old. Nowadays, European clubs suffer from a lack of recognition and visibility, which is why one of the goals of the project was to create synergy between European clubs, on a national and European level as well as provide European Clubs’ coordinators with useful advice and pedagogical innovative tools. The current project is the logical continuation of a previous Erasmus+ project also focused on the concept of European Clubs and coordinated by our Polish partner. The diversity of the partnership is what made this project so interesting. In fact, we collaborated with NGOs as well as school institutions and local authorities enabling new bounds to be created between the partners. We mixed organisations we already worked with and new ones : it was our first time working alongside the Twinning Comity of Meudon, the city of Brezno and the High School Nicolae Iorga of Braila. Therefore, our new partners benefited from the year long experience the Polish and Portuguese organisations had with European Clubs. Six transnational activities were organised within the framework of the project : four trinational mobilities engaging European Clubs students were successively conducted in Portugal (march 2018), Romania (may 2018), Poland (november 2018) and Slovakia (march 2019) ; finally, two transnational meetings took place in France : the kick-off meeting of the project (december 2017) and the final evaluation meeting (June 2019). The main results of the project, which all contributed to reach our goal, raising awareness and educating pupils and teachers about the European Union through non formal learning methods, were the following : - the cooperation between European Clubs at a national and European level : several bilateral bonds were formed or reinforced between European Clubs or organisations ; - Helping teachers and pupils to acquire new skills : evolving in an intercultural environment, oral expression in English, playful pedagogical activities ; - the creation of four new active European Clubs : three in France and one in Romania; - Getting participants acquainted with new pedagogical tools, in particular the e-twinning online platform. The main impact the project had on the participants was, without a doubt, the developement of their wish to discover new cultures and travel abroad and a better intercultural communication. Furthermore, the project enabled to create a better understanding of the functioning, the programs and the politics of the EU.