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Description
Romania has two major issues - an underdeveloped political culture that translates to a lack of interest for community engagement, and citizens with low critical thinking skills - that leaves a society to be vulnerable in the face of disinformation and authoritarianism. These two problems are - to a significant extent - caused by the incapacity of the educational system to act on these domains: in Romanian schools, civic culture is taught only in the first four grades and the VIIth and VIIIth grade, and the education style is still based on teachers’ authority and focused on memorization. Civic engagement and critical thinking interventions are discrete measures, implemented by a handful of teachers and NGOs who train the teachers or organize informal workshops with the students, in school or outside it. But all these elements are uncoordinated and thus fail to generate system changes. Together with our partners from ARKIVET, we will bring to Romania and adapt Dembra - the project implemented at a national level in Norway that proposes a series of integrated measures, focused both on teachers and on students, which can produce a significant leap in the critical thinking, social and civic competencies, all of them being transversals competencies considered essential in the 21st century society. The measures include cumulative methods, from workshops for teachers and students to cultural exposure, promotion of volunteering and of the relation with the public authorities, as well as mentoring activities, all of these ongoing for one year and adapted to their real needs. The project will be implemented in 4 schools in small towns, aiming for effects on teachers and students but also on an institutional level - by creating a set of procedures/instruments they can use.