Training Material for GCE in rural areas Erasmus Project

Project Title

Training Material for GCE in rural areas

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: Access for disadvantaged; EU Citizenship, EU awareness and Democracy; Civic engagement / responsible citizenship

Project Summary

Global Citizenship Education aims to empower learners to engage behaviours and the mentality of being active citizens, locally and globally, creating a more just, peaceful, tolerant, inclusive, secure and sustainable world.
Research into the topic of Global Citizenship Education in Rural Areas shows an increasing need of a new approach towards the tools and methodology of GCE due to the rapidly changing understanding of citizenship and shifting cultural diversity within the areas. Within this context, it is crucial to re-evaluate the current methodology and invest in the creation of new tools and approaches.
Based on the investigation done during the implementation of the RURAL DEAR AGENDA project, carried out under the EYD 2015 framework, and on the analysis carried out in several rural areas around EU, it was found that the promotion of and the actions related to GCE are mainly done in urban areas by CSOs with a noted absence of policy implementation. While the policy framework exists for GCE in most countries, the actual implementation is complicated due to the sparsity of population in some regions and the engagement of the public within the field. In general, EU rural areas lack structured, non-isolated interconnected training on GCE issues.

There are countless of teaching materials, but most of them have not been contextualized and updated, and of course not tailored to the rural environment. On the other hand, there is little knowledge of the cultural and rural reality of the migrant populations, their resources and potential, their socioeconomic aspects and the factors that determine them. There is limited access to positive educational materials supporting creativity and critical thinking.

Therefore, this project aims to introduce outputs to motivate people to become active citizens of their communities and to branch out into the wider context. Following a participation-based process, the project aims to build on the existing teaching practices and improve the related tools, approaches and previous transnational practices to:
-Provide better opportunities and materials to the educators that are implementing activities in this field of education in rural areas
-Contribute towards an easier approach and reach of the process of citizens participation, specifically in rural areas within Europe.

Furthermore, the project aims to tackle the issue of outdated GCE materials, by updating them, to suit the changing communities within the rural areas also considering the specific features of migrant populations within the regions as well as their resources and potential, their socioeconomic situation and their determining factors.

Lastly, the project aims to tackle the lack of training and available materials for the people who aim to be the participants in the GCE trainer activities. The consortium partners will approach the idea of equipping educators with the right tools, drawing from the previous teaching materials as well as good practices from different rural areas internationally.

The goal of the proposed approach is to fully exploit the advantages of online education methods and approaches, over other more “traditional” educational methodologies, and to make GCE-related education feasible and easily accessible to any interested individual involved in the sector. This will be realised with the support of personalised learning approaches and collaborative learning.
The online tool aims to integrate distance-learning strategies, to deliver digital tools and professional development for tailormade and easy-to-follow courses with interesting assignments.
Thus, the objectives of this project are:

GENERAL OBJECTIVE:
Promoting GCE in EU rural areas by developing innovative and ICT training material addressed to rural key agents.

SPECIFIC OBJECTIVES:
Developing and testing training material tailored to rural reality and addressed to rural key agents.
Improve the knowledge and the professional skills of educators in rural areas with innovative tools and teaching methods.
Provide opportunities for inclusive education.
Promote media literacy, including digital consumer competences in rural areas as a sustainable learning tool for GCE.

TARGETS
NGO activists in rural areas
Rural CSOs members
Rural municipalities (staff and politicians
Social educators
Rural development agents
Rural schools (teachers and staff)

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 243280 Eur

Project Coordinator

CIVIC COMPUTING LIMITED & Country: UK

Project Partners

• A & A Emphasys Interactive Solutions Ltd
• ATERMON B.V.
• PANEPISTIMIO THESSALIAS
• RUSENSKA TARGOVSKO INDUSTRIALNA KAMARA
• INSTALOFI LEVANTE SL