CONTEXT The project aims to create a "space on the European Union" suitable for new generations with a series of interactive recreational-cultural-educational tools and activities in Europe with the direct active involvement of school students, encouraging intergenerational dialogue and the sense of active European citizenship using innovative gamification and digital products. This will allow to develop a better quality of work which, today, in the school sector is developed in relation to European citizenship because the project will generate the right tools to work with young people and will provide teachers with "a new way to explain Europe and its values "through "serious games" able to involve the students and make them learn by actively participating and having fun. BACKGROUND The reasons behind the project proposal are obviously very connected with the current situation of knowledge and mistrust that especially young people but also adults have towards institutions and in particular towards those that feel "less close" from the territorial point of view, especially in a period, like the current one, in which: - there are few job opportunities, especially in the South, - nationalist pressures increase throughout Europe, - the economic crisis seems to have resumed, - European rules are perceived a bit by everyone as perhaps too restrictive. OBJECTIVES The goal of the project is to make everyone understand that we need to believe more in our current European institutions by investing in greater active participation in the social and political context: but this is possible only if you can excite people and make them live on the feeling of being a European citizen. This will also be a way to push people to go and exercise their right to vote with more awareness, for which the European Commission invested heavily in all countries in 2019 (election year of the new European Parliament) with the campaign #thistimeIvote. The project, therefore, following this trail of information/training will push future generations of voters even after 2019 to believe more in European institutions. The fundamental objective of the project is therefore to communicate the European Union and its institutions in a form that is at the same time simple, modern, innovative, immediate and aware. PARTICIPANTS The target group will be composed of at least 1000 young students but also trainers and teachers who will develop together a "path of active and pro-active knowledge" of Europe and its institutions, increasing and giving importance to the founding values of the common Europe. The project activities program intends to involve as direct beneficiaries: 1.Staff of partner organizations 2. Students and young people 3. Teachers and trainers 4. Stakeholders and general public ACTIVITY DESCRIPTION The program of planned intellectual activities and products will be managed as part of a strategic pan-European partnership, made up of very experienced organizations in the fields of gamification and multimedia educational training with the use of 2-3-dimensional serious games and development of group and table teaching games. The project involves the development of 32 months of activity to produce a path based on the following 7 tools: 1) THE ANIMATED HISTORY OF EUROPEAN UNION 2) EUROPE HUNT 3) WHO IS WHO? 4) DISCOVER THE FOUNDING VALUES 5) EUROQUIZ 6) I AM ALSO A EUROPEAN DEPUTY 7) RECREATIONAL-TRAINING PATHS There are also several outcomes such as: - project logo - official website in Italian and English - project brochure in Italian and English - 5 newsletters in Italian and English - project Facebook page - Facebook group for the project staff - press conferences - video-spot to promote the Multiplier Event - activity monitoring - activity evaluation - dissemination activities. METHODOLOGIES In order to effectively reach the various target groups, the project will combine different educational, multidisciplinary and operational tools, favoring the interaction of methodologies and techniques for intercultural education, mainly using the methods promoted in the COE and CE Training Kits. Furthermore the following methodologies will be applied: 1) EXPERENTIAL LEARNING 2) LEARNING BY DOING 3) GAMIFICATION OF LEARNING EXPECTED IMPACT The many intellectual products envisaged in the project will therefore be able to involve a very large number of young students: it is estimated that, after the creation of the planned outputs (composed of various elements and tools), at least will be involved, in the last 6 months, 1000 young people who can actively participate in the innovative educational path created by the European partnership. 20.000 are the indirect beneficiaries foreseen.
The fundamental objective of the project was to communicate the European Union and its institutions in a form that was at the same time simple, modern, innovative, immediate and aware: - effectively reaching young people in particular, - combining different didactic, multidisciplinary and operational tools, - promoting the interaction of methodologies and techniques for intercultural education, - promoting knowledge through experience and play, - improving the sense of supranational citizenship, - promoting awareness of the activities and responsibilities of the European Parliament, its role and its nature as a supranational institution capable with its decisions of having direct effects on the life of all citizens of the European Union. The need that we wanted to satisfy was the creation of innovative and engaging teaching tools for schools that would allow teachers to work concretely with students on the formation of European citizenship by interesting and involving them through ludic-educational activities (given that teachers did not have this type of tools which are now considered indispensable in teaching).
The motivations behind the applied project were connected with the situation of little knowledge of the European institutions and the distrust that young people and adults have towards public institutions and in particular towards those perceived as "less close" from a territorial point of view, especially in a period, such as the current one, in which: - job opportunities are few, especially in the South, - nationalist impulses are increasing throughout Europe - the economic crisis has resumed (moreover in recent years also aggravated by the pandemic and the war in Ukraine) - the European rules are perceived by all as perhaps too restrictive - schools have little funds and time to devote to the study of Europe, its history, its institutions and its opportunities. The project objectives were: - make everyone understand that we must believe more in the European institutions by investing in greater active participation in the social and political context; - make Europe known in a different way through playful-training courses that could succeed in making people passionate (especially young students), making them experience European citizenship and encouraging them to believe more in the EU