Hosting Empowerment Erasmus Project

Project Title

Hosting Empowerment

Project Key Action

This project related with these key action: Cooperation for innovation and the exchange of good practices

Project Action Type

This project related with this action type : Strategic Partnerships for adult education

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2020

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: New innovative curricula/educational methods/development of training courses; Access for disadvantaged; EU Citizenship, EU awareness and Democracy

Project Summary

CONTEXT: New Active Citizenship in Europe

The role of active citizenship in Europe has undergone a change in the last few decades. Many citizens no longer feel attracted by established institutions like political parties, churches or charity organisations; representation by such organisations is seen as only one way of influencing events. Citizens want to directly participate. Therefore new demands have arisen, such as the need of support for individuals starting new initiatives or creating transformation processes. Governments, NGOs and groups of citizens need tools to facilitate approaches to tackle their own issues more effectively. Driven by this outlook, the seven partner organisations Art Monastery Italia (Italy), Plenum (Austria), Legacy17 (Sweden), Biovilla (Portugal), Rogers Foundation (Hungary) and Visionautik Akademie (Germany) work as “Transformation Academies” that empower and enable citizens to tackle the challenges they face.

OBJECTIVE: Empower citizens to shape society
In our experience one of the biggest obstacles to contributing to positive social change has shown to be the lack of confidence in individuals and groups that they are able to effectuate change. As they are the ones who are experiencing the brunt of the problems it is most impactful if the solutions come from them. Therefore our project focuses on empowering citizens to take action and improve their own circumstances. Empowerment is one of the three pillars of social innovation, alongside “meeting human needs” and “changing social relations”.

PARTICIPANTS: With this project we will empower citizens in two target groups:
-We’ll empower vulnerable people suffering from pressing problems like poverty, marginalization, stigma or exclusion. We will enable and encourage them to improve their situations and thus give power to one of our basic beliefs: “Everyone has the right to shape the world with joy and ease.” We aim to reach 20.000 of these individuals (such as refugees, the ethnic minorities, unemployed or homeless, those with chronic illnesses or other disabilities) over the course of the project.

-We will also empower group leaders, facilitators and social innovators who are important drivers for change. Empowered leaders can do better work for the common good without burning out and are good inspirations and role models. We will provide them with empowering facilitation methods they can use in their work. We aim to reach 30.000 of these leaders over the course of the project. They, in turn, have the potential to impact many thousands more.

ACTIVITIES: Empowerment products for support
We will create five products that will be available for free to everyone and actively promote them to the above mentioned groups and to the general public:

1. Hosting Empowerment Guidebook will act as a resource and support to social workers, facilitators, teachers, and anyone who works with disadvantaged groups
2. App for empowerment with playful and experiential content
3. Self-empowerment workbook that can be self-paced or experienced in groups, available in nine languages
4. Toolbox for facilitators: a collection of 50 new empowerment methods added to an existing database on facilitation methods
5. Short film to inspire, uplift and empower

We will disseminate our approach and our empowering products with 10 events in our partners’ countries. They will each last one day and serve more than 300 facilitators or inspirational leaders in the field of lifelong learning.

METHODOLOGY
To carry out our project we use, amongst other procedures, the Human Centered Design Approach. This method allows us to carefully integrate the needs, wants and limitations of our target groups and make sure our products unfold their maximum potential to serve and empower the users.

IMPACT: The expected results of three years of empowering activities are:
• 100-200 facilitators and multipliers reach our database every day, about 10 of them per day actively make use of our empowerment toolbox
• At least 1500 people will be empowered through the app
• More than 9.000 people will benefit from the self-empowerment workbook, available online in 9 languages
• 10.000 viewers get inspired and encouraged by a short film
• More than 300 multipliers attend 10 empowering events where they acquire tools which they can use to empower approximately 4.000 people they work with

Altogether we expect more than 50.000 people to have heard about empowering methods and know what they can do to become more empowered, or where they can turn to find support. At least 4.000 of them have a self-perception as changemakers, follow a purpose, feel supported by their community and activate their potential for being active in tackling pressing problems.

The overall result of our project is empowered citizens who dare to tackle the pressing issues they perceive. The long term benefit will be a Europe full of active citizens shaping their own lives and surroundings.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 444633 Eur

Project Coordinator

Visionautik e.V. & Country: DE

Project Partners

• BVLL – Cooperativa para o Desenvolvimento Sustentável, C.R.L.
• Dr. Luiza Bengtsson, Ursel Biester GbR
• PLENUM – GESELLSCHAFT FUR GANZHEITLICH NACHHALTIGE ENTWICKLUNG GMBH
• Rogers Személyközpontú Oktatásért Alapítvány
• Art Monastery Italia
• Legacy17