Club Europe: creating European Clubs and strengthening existing activities Erasmus Project

Project Title

Club Europe: creating European Clubs and strengthening existing activities

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 school education

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2017

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Teaching and learning of foreign languages; EU Citizenship, EU awareness and Democracy; New innovative curricula/educational methods/development of training courses

Project Summary

European Clubs appeared in Portugal in the 80’s in order to raise awareness about the entrance of the country in the EEC among the Portuguese population. Their functioning replicates the one of the UNESCO Clubs founded in the 60’s. Since then, European Clubs developed in several European countries, primarily in the countries that entered the European communities after the 80’s.
European Clubs are groups of non-formal learning spontaneously constituted inside the school. The participants gather voluntarily in order to participate or set up activities revolving around a common interest for the European Union, the discovery of new cultures and countries and international cooperation. Each club is coordinated by one or several members of the pedagogical team of the school.
The goal of the project is to raise awareness about European topics among secondary school pupils in order to galvanize former Polish and Portuguese European Clubs and help create new one in Romania, France and Slovakia where the concept is not well developed yet.
The use of non formal learning methods is at the core of this initiative designed to supplement the education received in school by providing a European approach. Even if the Clubs are formed inside the school institution for most cases, they function as an extracurricular activity. The underlying goal is to directly involve students in their local community and help them becoming active and enlightened citizens. Within the framework of this project, we mainly worked with pupils from age 13 to 18 years old.
Nowadays, European clubs suffer from a lack of recognition and visibility, which is why one of the goals of the project was to create synergy between European clubs, on a national and European level as well as provide European Clubs’ coordinators with useful advice and pedagogical innovative tools.
The current project is the logical continuation of a previous Erasmus+ project also focused on the concept of European Clubs and coordinated by our Polish partner.
The diversity of the partnership is what made this project so interesting. In fact, we collaborated with NGOs as well as school institutions and local authorities enabling new bounds to be created between the partners. We mixed organisations we already worked with and new ones : it was our first time working alongside the Twinning Comity of Meudon, the city of Brezno and the High School Nicolae Iorga of Braila. Therefore, our new partners benefited from the year long experience the Polish and Portuguese organisations had with European Clubs.
Six transnational activities were organised within the framework of the project : four trinational mobilities engaging European Clubs students were successively conducted in Portugal (march 2018), Romania (may 2018), Poland (november 2018) and Slovakia (march 2019) ; finally, two transnational meetings took place in France : the kick-off meeting of the project (december 2017) and the final evaluation meeting (June 2019).
The main results of the project, which all contributed to reach our goal, raising awareness and educating pupils and teachers about the European Union through non formal learning methods, were the following :
– the cooperation between European Clubs at a national and European level : several bilateral bonds were formed or reinforced between European Clubs or organisations ;
– Helping teachers and pupils to acquire new skills : evolving in an intercultural environment, oral expression in English, playful pedagogical activities ;
– the creation of four new active European Clubs : three in France and one in Romania;
– Getting participants acquainted with new pedagogical tools, in particular the e-twinning online platform.
The main impact the project had on the participants was, without a doubt, the developement of their wish to discover new cultures and travel abroad and a better intercultural communication. Furthermore, the project enabled to create a better understanding of the functioning, the programs and the politics of the EU.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 74210 Eur

Project Coordinator

ASSOCIATION JEAN MONNET & Country: FR

Project Partners

• LICEUL TEORETIC “NICOLAE IORGA”
• MESTO BREZNO
• POLSKA FUNDACJA IM. ROBERTA SCHUMANA
• ASSOCIACAO EDUCATIVA NACIONAL DE INCLUSAO E INOVAÇAO NAS ESCOLAS
• COMMUNE DE MEUDON