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Accredited project in the field of youth

2021-1-DE04-KA151-YOU-0000096212021Mobility of young people for accredited organisationsfinalized
Countries: DE · Grant: €131,552.81

Objectives

The aim of the educational work at the Kurt Löwenstein Education Centre is to enable children and young people to analyze their own situation in a socio-political context and to relate it to their own interests. Through participatory possibilities, participants learn to recognize, formulate and publicly represent their own interests and needs. They can experience the possibilities and limits of co-determination and interest representation and try out structures of democratic participation. As a youth educational institution that belongs to a political children's and youth association that has the representation of the interests of children and young people as its aim, fundamental aspects of political participation are a cross-section of our educational projects. Our partners are youth organizations and civil society initiatives, by and for young people in Europe and around the world and, due to what has been described, are central to the seminars carried out in this project. As political educators, we aim to strengthen democratic culture. Based on the children and young people's own interests, we work with them to develop socio-political demands and enable them to stand up for their interests and needs. Our project partners came primarily from the European network Educational Network for Solidarity, Democracy and Equality (EduNet-SDE). The network, which we co-founded in 2005, now includes 25 youth work/education providers from over 20 countries, mainly in the EU and the Middle East. Our seminars and meetings connect and enable the exchange of young people, international child and youth educators, politically and civil society active people and other interested parties. We primarily bring in extracurricular approaches to strengthen young people's social participation processes and discuss these in our seminars and the different perspectives on them from each of our own perspectives. Based on this, we exchange information about our respective educational work, develop non-formal learning concepts together (if necessary, further) and bring these back into our respective educational work back at home and act as multipliers in our organizations and spheres of activity. Our educational work aims at emancipatory personal development and thus also has a preventive effect against radicalization and promotes social cohesion. Our educational institution has been active in the three core areas of action of the EU youth strategy: engage, connect and empower since it was founded more than 40 years ago. Participants should submit (topic-)suggestions (usually via evaluation forms from seminars) for future exchanges. We have long been offering our participants online networking opportunities in preparation for seminars and meetings, which are also used after a seminar. We combine analogue and digital learning and have our own digital learning platform. Our seminars are conducted by an international team of facilitators. They have extensive knowledge in the area of youth work and are former participants in our international seminars. Our seminar conception processes are kept as transparent and participatory as possible, both for team members and for participants. In all of our seminars there are fixed program points that ensure the active participation of the participants and make them the subject of the learning process. Participating and getting involved means taking responsibility and thereby experiencing self-efficacy and affiliation, which not only helps strengthen self-confidence and develop social skills, but also prevents or counteracts the resistance of young people to basic democratic attitudes. All the goals of the EU youth strategy are politically relevant for us. This time, with the activities carried out in this project, we were primarily active in Goals 2, 3 and 9 to 11. Our seminar week Queer Easter 2022 was aimed more specifically at equality for all genders and inclusive societies. With the activity “Fridays for a social future” we worked particularly towards Goal 10, a sustainable and green Europe. We always include goals 9 and 11 in our seminar concepts, especially through an elaborate participation process in the seminar design itself, which we constantly develop further, especially in the “Education for social change” activity reported here.

Project partners (1)