Citizen Laboratory Erasmus Project

Project Title

Citizen Laboratory

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 2015

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: EU Citizenship, EU awareness and Democracy; Access for disadvantaged; ICT – new technologies – digital competences

Project Summary

This Strategic Partnership project brought together organisations active in the field of non-formal education in 4 European countries. The consortium consisted of a diverse range of educational providers with various level of experience, international involvement, target groups and history. All the participating organisations identified European citizenship and entrepreneurship education as a priority topic for them and decided to make the topic their strategic focus. This project helped them to concentrate during a period of 2 years on developing innovative approaches in their work with adult learners through the use of non-formal education.

The ethos of the project was centred around entrepreneurship and citizenship, since we believe that there is a large overlap of characteristics that make a good entrepreneur and an active citizen. Both of them need analytical thinking, they need to see problems in their surroundings and identify solutions to these problems and they both need mentality and positive thinking to be able to effect a change. An entrepreneur implements solutions through business, creating jobs and through economic means. An active citizen uses different means – mobilising public support, turning attention to a problem, convincing political representatives about possible solutions. However, we believe these characteristics are lacking among the citizens in European countries. European citizens are often passive, they wait for the state to solve their problems, they feel frustrated by news from media but they are not ready to take action, think about solutions, propose them to the public, volunteers and be pro-active.

Active citizenship is very much based on attitudes and skills, rather than mere knowledge. Therefore, non-formal education is an important tool in promoting active citizenship. Non-formal education is suitable for working with attitudes and skills of learners. Adult learners need a positive educational experience to become active citizens. They need to overcome the feeling that they cannot change anything, that nobody listens to them.

“The Citizen Laboratory” project helped us to develop and test innovative methodology for citizenship and entrepreneurship education of adult learners, and it is an initiative for creation of positive attitude of adult learners, making them aware of their knowledge and giving them new skills to cope with the modern time.

The main activities of this project were:

13-19.11.2015 Kick-off meeting in Tallinn, Estonia
15-21.11.2016 First international seminar in Saxon-Sion, France
24-28.01.2017 Mid-term evaluation meeting in Metz, France
19-26.06.2017 Second international seminar in Arlon, Belgium
1-7.08.2017 Final evaluation meeting in Metz, France

Taking into consideration that this project involves a partner country, which is not a European member, we believe that this project also built up on the knowledge in Macedonia, but also brought various conclusions for all participants, coming from very different backgrounds. Bearing in mind the different social, educational, economic and cultural characteristics of the 4 countries, involved in this project, it is visible that this compilation brought out great diversity of attitudes and ways of living, which strongly correlated with the topics of being active member of the society and the predispositions of doing business as a successful entrepreneur. We believe that exactly these terms are the base of the international dimension of the project creating unique opportunity for adult education.

The project involved adults, working in education (teachers, professors, trainers), people who have been out of work for long time and adults who are working or are correlated to the institutions, working as social services in the partners countries (national social service, NGOs working on social topics, official social issues advising centers). In addition, the project activities were supported by internet technology and communications tools.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 68835 Eur

Project Coordinator

Together Pan European network organisation asbl & Country: FR

Project Partners

• WIRELESS ASBL
• Mtü Together Estonia
• GET INNOVATION