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Critical Thinking - healthy food for your mind

2019-2-FR02-KA105-0161962019Youth mobilityfinalized
Countries: FR|RU|PL|UA|LV|BY · Grant: €25,779.8
Civic engagement / responsible citizenshipEU Citizenship, EU awareness and DemocracyYouth (Participation, Youth Work, Youth Policy)

Objectives

We as young people today are exposed to a lot of information, videos, pictures and news, through different communication channels. But how do we know which information or news are real and trustworthy, and which one are fake, biased or not trustworthy?The idea of the project appeared in the early 2017 on another Erasmus+ project, when French, Latvian and Polish participants had a big discussion about the influence of modern day media, social networks and information in general on how we think, act and evaluate reality around us.During this discussion we all came to the same idea that living in an informational society we deal with such challenges as disinformation, fakes and subjective information. One of participant shared a story about how in recent years France and Poland had to deal in with many situations of disinformation and fake attack informational area. Another part of the discussion was about challenges that EU is dealing with today like the rise of the far-right parties,discrimination and intolerance issues and other problems.And we saw connection between these two issues. We understood that media and social networks have huge influence on everything what is happening around us and that we all,and especially us as young people are quite often not protected or even aware from this negative influence.As a result of the discussion,we decided to start an international movement with the main idea of developing critical thinking skills, media literacy and fighting back fakes and disinformation.We had in mind other movement, which inspired us, we saw before on other Erasmus+ project, “No hate” movement,which is run by multiple organizations in Europe and Caucasus. "Critical Thinking - healthy food for your mind" is the Youth Exchange, taking place in Agde, France in September 2019, which would be an establishing point for the international movement with the main idea of developing critical thinking skills, media literacy and fighting back fakes and disinformation. At this YE we plan to share all our individual and common thoughts with all participants, and thereby share the initial idea of the movement and give them an opportunity to be part of creating this movement. For 7 days participants will work on movement’s concept, vision, brand, logo, motto, possible activities at local and international levels, project plans, etc. We also will start creating simple tools which can be spread among partners and which could help to develop critical thinking, media literacy and in general help with dealing with fakes and disinformation. The main aim of the project is to gather young people from 6 countries who will work together to create the international movement devoted to developing critical thinking and media literacy skills among young people and to develop ideas for future activities and projects in terms of this movement. The project seeks to fulfill these objectives: - To increase understanding of how media and social networks affect our perception - To increase media literacy among the participants - To develop skills of critical thinking among participants - To create the concept, vision, brand, logo, motto, and possible activities for the future movement devoted to the critical thinking and media literacy; - To find common ground and innovative ideas for future partnership working using the skills and knowledge of people from diverse backgrounds. - To develop future projects on the topic - To raise participants' awareness and understanding of other cultures and countries The objectives and idea of the project correspond with Erasmus+ objectives as the YE will help participants to improve their attitudes, skills and knowledge, to increase the capacities, and the wish and will to take part in the democratic life in Europe as active and critical citizens. A long-term goal for the project and for the movement is to raise participants' awareness and understanding of other cultures and countries through reducing of the negative influence of disinformation and fakes which produce hatred and can lead to the rise of intolerance and discrimination.

Project partners (6)