Description
The notion of European integration has become a nation propriety. The education started to focus on the individual as the supreme value - through development of the spiritual culture. The education for democratic citizenship focused mainly on rights, responsibilities and active participation, in relation with the civic, social, economic, legal and cultural size of the society. Through this project we aim the development of skills in the area of democratic values, human rights, gender equality for 75 youngsters aged between 14 and 18 years, by engaging them in thematic workshops; promotional campaigns for these values; community impacting groups. Though the actions and activities implemented in the project we are not only focusing on the development and acquiring of skills and capabilities by youth, but also focus our attention on their ability to implement actions in the society for the defense and advertising of democratic rights and values.
Summary of project results
The project “Today’s youth: tomorrow’s democracy” aimed at developing competences and increasing knowledge in the area of democratic values, human rights, gender equality of 75 teenagers aged 14-18, by involving them in thematic workshops, awareness campaigns, and community impact groups. Many research studies have shown that youngsters in Romania do not have enough information about democratic values, human rights, gender equality, or people who face social exclusion. This lack of information and interest from the authorities and educational system representatives leads to discriminatory behaviour and ignorance amongst youngsters, even from early ages. Given all these, the project proposed a series of activities involving teenagers - students in the highschools of Drobeta Turnu Severin, activities meant to develop their capacities of understanding concepts such as discrimination, bullying, gender inequality, as well as to enable them to use effective methods of fighting those phenomena in their social circles, and in the society, in general. During the implementation of the project, an initiative group of 5 young people with leadership abilities and 5 teachers from schools in Drobeta Turnu Severin was formed. They have been selected based on the voluntary activities they had previously been involved in, or coordinated. The initiative group was trained to develop facilitation activities with the young people in the project. The teens who attended the project took part in thematic workshops, living libraries, world cafes, designing awareness campaign on democratic values for the community. At the beginning, most of the teens involved in the project were not aware of any forms of virtual bullying and any measures of prevention; only a small part of them knew measures of fighting against hate speech and which the most important human rights are. At the end of the project, a significant improvement in the awareness of social phenomena such as discrimination, hate speech, bullying could be observed in the target group. The initiation, in the framework of the project, of the community impact groups has the role to pass the skills and the knowledge gained in the project to the next generation of students.
Summary of bilateral results