UPdate – New approaches to civic education in youth work Erasmus Project

Project Title

UPdate – New approaches to civic education in youth work

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) ; Civic engagement / responsible citizenship; New innovative curricula/educational methods/development of training courses

Project Summary

The rise of nationalism, incidents of hate speech and hate crime, attacks on migrants and refugees, propaganda and violent xenophobia have already become a growing issue all over Europe and beyond during the last years. National and European political stakeholder have called upon the youth sector, in cooperation with the education sector and other relevant sectors and actors to make a joint effort and to take action for strengthening democratic civic education at member state and European level. But the Covid-19 pandemic has shown us very clearly that the erosion of the rule of law and the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights has reached a level that not only calls into question the rule of law and systematically undermines human rights, but also puts the European project as such into question. Today, the shrinking space for civil society and youth work is a real and existing danger.

Whereas youth sector itself and the wider public still show great difficulties to acknowledge the political dimension of youth work, experts from the European youth field call out for a qualitative leap in the direction of a more critical, democratic, emancipatory and empowering pedagogical youth work practice for young people to become “change makers” for a different Europe of social cohesion and the application of common fundamental values – to be seen as agents of social and societal change and citizenship. The partner consortium of the project “UPdate – New approaches to civic education in youth work” agrees that the time is more than ripe for daring to make a substantive breakthrough in (European) youth work and training for (European) youth work that puts democracy into the focus and into practice.

The project aims to make a practice-relevant contribution to “best practice” in the context of European critical youth citizenship education and to enhance the quality of youth work through developing and implementing new and innovative approaches to civic education in in current initial and further training curricula for youth workers and youth leaders.

The project reaches out to the following objectives:
a) Advocating for the use of critical emancipatory pedagogy in youth work to promote critical youth citizenship
b) Supporting the capacity building of youth workers and youth leaders with regard to critical youth citizenship education
c) Promoting innovation through developing and testing an integrated blended learning approach of critical youth citizenship education

During this Strategic Partnership project, a Franco-German-Tunisian cross-sectoral partner consortium of experienced organisations from the field of will pool its ressources, skills and expertise in the domain of youth worker training and civic education.

At first, the partner consortium will conduct an in-depth analysis (online survey and interviews with young people, youth workers, trainers) of civic education in the youth sector and existing civic education concepts in initial and further training curricula of youth workers and youth leaders in Germany, France and Tunisia. European studies, best practices of pilot projects and recent publications and initiatives by stakeholders from the European youth field e.g. Erasmus+ Youth in Action National Agencies, EU-CoE youth partnership, SALTO Training and Cooperation Centre will be taken into account for the analysis. The partner consortium will then develop an innovative blended learning training curriculum for trainers/educators of youth workers and youth leaders on critical youth citizenship education including four thematic modules which will be tested by 15 trainers/educators of youth work as well as 300 students/trainees of youth work and youth workers in existing initial and further training curricula of youth workers and youth leaders in Germany, France and Tunisia and result into an educational training guide.

The project results and outputs will be disseminated in a multi-track approach at local, national and European level as well as in three multiplier events in Germany, France and Tunisia.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 181222 Eur

Project Coordinator

IKAB-Bildungswerk & Country: DE

Project Partners

• Fondation INFA Institut National de Formation et d’Application
• CLUB CULTUREL ALI BALHOUANE