MED-CITIZENS VIRTUAL EXCHANGES

Create Innovation in European Citizenship Education

Project Consortium 

PROJECT SUMMARY

Med-Citizen is a transnational project funded by the European Union’s Erasmus Virtual Exchanges in Higher Education and Youth programme. The project strives to enhance virtual exchanges in citizenship education through organising a series of online people-to-people activities that promote intercultural dialogue and soft skills development focusing on democratic and civic education to tackle radicalisation. Med-Citizen's virtual exchanges model will be drafted based on design thinking and co-creation approaches.
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​Med-Citizen strives to enhance virtual exchanges in citizenship education through organising a series of online people-to-people activities that promote intercultural dialogue and soft skills development focusing on democratic and civic education to tackle radicalization. Med-Citizen's virtual exchanges’ model will be drafted based on design thinking and co-creation approaches. The work of Med-Citizen is based on 4 streams:
The first stream, Education for democracy aims at training University students enrolled in relevant programmes (e.g., Political Science, Economics, Sociology etc.) to act as facilitators
in the online workshops that will be organised in the third stream. This will take place through online workshops with professors and experts that will provide the participants the knowledge needed both on a discipline level but most importantly on teaching techniques and peer-to-peer learning.
The second stream, Co-creation of a model for online building activities, will focus on building a novel model for online intercultural activities that will be based on co-creation. The third stream, tackling radicalization online/offline, will focus on creating communities of experience, as distinct environments of discussion and collaborative interaction with students, professors, and civil society organisations from across Europe. It will organise online virtual exchanges that will facilitate intercultural learning.
The fourth stream, Peer-to-peer support and mentoring will create and facilitate opportunities for young people of various backgrounds to learn from each other, engage in dialogue and support each other in their studies and future work competences. As such activities are tested in this project, a workshop for vulnerability and diversity inclusion in virtual exchange formats in higher education networks and in NGOs will be organised. The project strives to incorporate gender and the inclusion of socially and economically vulnerable young persons

OBJECTIVES

To set up the analytical framework supporting activities across WPs;
▪ To conduct data collection and analysis on innovations in democratic education;
▪ To map innovations in European citizenship education taking into account physical, digital and hybrid settings.
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Impact maximisation of Med-Citizen results and stimulate their adoption and effective uptake across Europe and beyond. engage young people and relevant stakeholders to the project activities and maximise the project results through the establishment of local info centres and online awareness-raising campaigns. sustains an active community of stakeholders. Engagement activities (pursued in all WPs) support the co-design, validation, awareness creation and identify barriers and enabling drivers, as well as potential actors who can contribute to maximising Med-Citizen impact.

Support and promote the exploitation and future success of project results, which uptake and use will be measured during and after the project execution. The plan is based on the SMART approach (specific-measurable-achievable-realistic-timely-targeted) with specific and ambitious targets and metrics/KPIs, and a detailed plan to be submitted at project’s first semester.

TARGET GROUPS

  • TG1: Researchers/ Academia: will be impacted through the conceptual and novel framework for analysing the effect of young people in political participation and education, the data collected and processed and the toolkits. The outputs of the project will be available and thus can be deployed and replicated to enhance the research in the focus area and potentially transfer it in other geographic areas or expand it in areas with similar socioeconomic and political drivers as well and further target groups.
  • TG2: Young People will benefit through their active involvement in creating their educational frameworks and the multiplying effect of their voices heard. They will gain innovative insight on European citizenship and participate in politics and policy-making ensuring the sustainability and effectiveness of the policies. The main benefit for this target group is achieved horizontally across all WPs.
  • TG3: Educators will gain practical toolkits, novel didactic methods and an interactive game through which they can update their teaching methods. They will further be upskilled through the training programme. The main benefit for this target group is achieved horizontally through all WPs.
  • TG4: Local communities/Citizens/Practitioners/Activists will better understand the processes of political extremism, its narratives and argumentation and will be able to utilise the generated outputs of the project for further use.
  • TG5: Public actors/Local representatives/ Policymakers will be provided with recommendations, guidelines and toolkits in order to create effective policies, implore participatory policy-making methods and further establish networks and co-creation events in order to uptake bottom-up approaches in policy making. The main benefit for this target group