Critical thinkers Erasmus Project

Project Title

Critical thinkers

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 2020

Project Topics

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

Project Summary

The COVID-19 crisis has unveiled how vulnerable Europe is to disinformation and populism. Some young people tend to have problems differentiating good quality media from opinion pieces and even influencers. Some perceive random people speaking on YouTube or Instagram as far more trustworthy than traditional media, because they are more likable and relatable.

Although Baltic States have been exposed to disinformation campaigns from Russia and have gathered valuable experience in building resilience, disinformation during Covid-19 was rampant in all three countries. Each of three has had different initiatives and projects in teaching and countering disinformation, however most of the available materials are rather academic and complex and fails to correspond to young peoples needs and are impossible to be used by youth workers. We believe that the COVID-19 crisis is a perfect time to aggregate Baltic know-how and experience and explore together in order to come with solutions applicable to all Europe.

Critical thinking and conscious participation are key in building resilience of young people to desinformation and manipulation. Therefore, this project aims to accumulate the know-how and experience of three Baltic States and three different organisations working in media literacy, political watchdogging and gamification fields in developing blended online and offline educational materials targeted to youth NGOs, youth workers, educators and young people. These target groups directly work with young people who are the most passive in public life and are active users of online. Often critical thinking and media literacy training materials they are using now are complicated, dry and not relevant to younger audiences. A goal of this project is to change that.

Objectives:
To analyse, compare and reflect on current practices and materials available in Baltic States on critical thinking and conscious participation.
To develop an online training course on critical thinking, media literacy and conscious participation for youth NGOS, youth workers and leaders with focus to youth.
To create interactive offline educational games on critical thinking and conscious participation relevant to young people and their needs.
To improve youth NGOs, youth workers and youth leaders competences in critical thinking and conscious participation
To increase awareness of young people of disinformation, fake news and threats to democracy
To facilitate mutual learning and build network of organisations working in the fields of critical thinking and conscious participation

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 88503 Eur

Project Coordinator

Europos namai & Country: LT

Project Partners

• Skeptiska biedriba
• MITTETULUNDUSUHING SHOKKIN GROUP