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Speechless in Europe | Sprachlos in Europa | Sans voix en Europe - the PlanetEUrope method - Innovative forms of dialogue about Europe and the EU for young people unacquainted with the concept of European citizenship
Start date: Sep 1, 2014, End date: Aug 31, 2016 PROJECT  FINISHED 

Finding and developing ways complementary to existing forms of traditional political communication, dialogue and debate fitting to the needs and interests of the majority of young people today, alienated from political discussions is the core of the project. Addressing and involving such young people that often do not know or care much about Europe, the EU or European integration is a task necessary in European youth work today. Continuously the gap between young people organised in long-standing European youth organisations and those that are not organized (or organised in a different form) increases. In order to not succumb to dialogue with young people that is dominated with the same voices while the others are “speechless”, the project seeks to further develop ways and tools to expand the conversation about the future of Europe and to train multipliers working with them to use these in their activities and projects. To that end, the project addresses on the one hand young people from the participating countries DE, FR, IT and HU between 16 – 27 years old, not interested, aware or keen on their role as European citizens. On the other hand it targets multipliers from diverse fields of education (youth workers, schools, foundations, local administrations etc,) working with these young people and having a decisive influence on their educational settings. Through different stages of combined online and offline working phases on the participative online-pattform Ypart (especially developed for young people), young Europeans are encouraged and supported in telling and sharing “their stories” about life in Europe today as well as their wishes, recommendations and ideas for the future of Europe. In order to achieve a “speechless” dialogue and create an understanding amongst young people from other European countries, these stories will be told in creative formats (photography, video, sketch, street art) and shared with young people from the other countries. In a second round of storytelling it will be task to tell the story of a young person from another country. These “European stories” will then be shared on a “European storytelling festival”. This process shall reach out to between 50 and 100 young people per country (there are no limits, since the online format allows for including many more), with a selected number of 40 young finalists attending the festival. At the same time multipliers working with these young people will be gathered, connected and trained in the usage of the project’s methods focussing on engaging young people in alternative forms of dialogue about Europe and the EU (e.g. storytelling, photography, theatre, etc). Throughout the project, approximately 80 multipliers per country will directly (through attending an activity) benefit from the project. Furthermore, through its extensive dissemination activities and outputs (incl. a summarising handbook and curriculum for multipliers) that are developed to reach out and have a long-lasting impact, even after project completion, an estimated number of 5,000 multipliers in different European countries can be reached. Through its actions and the implementation of combining non-traditional offline tools with online tools, the project reduces the elitist character of European participation and increases the legitimacy of the participation by broadening the spectrum of participants. Moreover, by challenging the participants to discuss and work together despite eventual linguistic barriers and by soliciting the capacity of putting themselves in each other’s shoes in order to tell the stories of their European compatriots, the project enables participants not only to learn and engage themselves throughout the project, but to create close ties, engage them effectively in Europe and European issues and thus strengthen their sense of European citizenship. Multipliers involved in the project gather extensive insight and first-hand experience in working with unconventional, creative and expressive forms of political dialogue and debate with young people about Europe both on local, national and European level. Participation in workshops as well as the many intellectual outputs set them on a path of directly conceptualising, planning and implementing many more youth activities with this target group of participants. Furthermore, through the establishment and offering of local worksshops a connected hub of youth workers, youth organisations, volunteers, staff of foundations and responsible people from local administration comes together to expand their horizons, learn and develop innovative approaches and strategies for involving ALL young people in a participative European dialogue about the future of Europe.
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