Social work with global perspective – An interdisciplinary contribution to youngster’s citizenship building Erasmus Project

Project Title

Social work with global perspective – An interdisciplinary contribution to youngster’s citizenship building

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 youth

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2015

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Environment and climate change; New innovative curricula/educational methods/development of training courses; Youth (Participation, Youth Work, Youth Policy)

Project Summary

This project aimed in the context of a strategic partnership to develop an innovative approach from the existing educational concepts Development Education and Awareness Raising/Global Learning (DEAR/GL), and social work. This approach is supposed to facilitate youngsters, particularly those with less (educational) opportunities, to regard themselves as active members of their society and to orientate themselves in a globalized world. They should acquire competences over the course of the project, which help them to act global and local responsible in the sense of a democratic, multi-cultural and sustainable society.Socio-economic effects at the local level as wealth inequalities and lack of social mobility and global transformations that are commonly identified as globalization, challenge youngsters, but also offer new opportunities. Orientation in a world with strong interdependencies and the opportunity to participate in social and political processes often decide whether these opportunities can be accepted or the challenges are seen as a threat.
Social work as a profession and practice-oriented scientific discipline accompanies social change and promotes social cohesion. Due to the above-mentioned changes in society, social work is increasingly confronted with global impacts and begins to open itself up to global issues in many ways.
DEAR/GL can be considered as an educational response to globalization processes. It seeks to open up new horizons of understanding and comprehension and provides orientation in the context of global interdependencies. By DEAR/GL, far-reaching processes and the effects of participation are tangible and can be experienced. Over the course of the project a common approach of both pedagogical approaches, a Glocal Citizenship Building, is supposed to be conceptualised, implemented and evaluated.

The project pursued two objectives for two target groups:
– The project aimed to reinforce skills of youngsters with less opportunity to give them opportunities to participate in social processes. This will help to improve their ability to orientate themselves in the globalized world and to act responsibly in the glocal sense. Their ability to reflect on their own opinions and desires is fostered by strengthening their positive self-perception in the sense of glocal-citizenship-building has been supported by the project.
– The project aimed to foster DEAR/GL as an important educational concept for global contexts and to demonstrate its contribution to corporate social responsibility. We propose this project as a European strategic partnership because we want to take into account the global aspects in project design and through the project, we want to enable a transnational knowledge and skills transfer. Target group of this partnership are DEAR/GL – stakeholders, public administrations, formal and non-formal educators and universities.

The project was implemented from January 1st 2016 until June 30th 2018 and divided into 3 phases in which the following activities are realized.

Phase 1 – “Conception“ (January 2016 – December 2017)
– Identification and exploitation of suitable cooperation partners from formal and non-formal education.
– Discussion of objectives, outcomes and indicators as well as exchange of concepts and methods between the regional actors.
– Definition of the conceptual framework in the first transnational workshop.
– Development of regional pilot projects.

Phase 2 – “Implementation“ (January 2016 – November 2017)
– Implementation of one or more regional pilot projects with the approach of the Glocal-Citizenship-Building for youngsters with opportunities- Documentation and evaluation of pilot projects for capitalization
– Exchange and discussion of intermediary results in the 2nd transnational workshop

Phase 3: – “Evaluation, Capitalization and Dissemination“ (July 2017 – December 2017)
– Completion of the evaluation and documentation.
– Framing of the handout and webpage on 3rd transnational workshop
– Evaluation of the results and preparation of a handout to disseminate best practice examples and the results for usage of other stakeholders.
– 4th transnational workshop with project conclusion and discussion of the results
– Dissemination of the results within a transnational multiplier event.

The following results have been produced during the project and on its completion:
Exchange of concepts, methods and skills at European level between the project partners. Partnerships at European level as well as synergies were created or reinforced.
Phase 1:
– At European and regional level new partnerships have emerged, in which the pedagogical approach of Glocal-Citizenship-Building was worked out.
Phase 2:
– At regional level, pilot projects have been implemented, evaluated and documented by the stakeholders.
Phase 3:
– The results of the implementation have been disseminated to third parties stakeholders through a handout, and a transnational multipliers event.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 129074 Eur

Project Coordinator

Eine Welt Netzwerk Thüringen e.V. & Country: DE

Project Partners

• Marche Solidali – coordinamento delle organizzazioni di cooperazione e solidarietà internazionale delle Marche
• Association Groupe d’Appui et de Solidarité
• REGIONE MARCHE
• Thüringer Staatskanzlei
• CENTRE SOCIAL ET CULTUREL DE BOHAIN
• REGION HAUTS-DE-FRANCE