“all on board –next stop CitizenSHIP!”

“all on board –next stop CitizenSHIP!” aims at bringing Europe closer to young people and young workers through an improved and active access to information on European issues through effective Europe-wide information campaigns and the development of youth media on this topic.
The goal of this project is to create a self-sustainable multinational and multilingual information network by young people and for young people based on a bottom-up model. To achieve, the project wishes to provide the tools to young citizens of different geographical, social, and cultural backgrounds to gather, analyze, and exchange news, ideas, and stories on European topics.
The core part of the project will be a series of events lasting four days to be held in different European countries in order to develop skills and exchange experiences on how to present the European Union and discuss on its current challenges in a fair, transparent and plural way. These events will include a preparatory meeting with the local partners/contact persons, an information campaing, a workshop on youth journalism and training in European active citizenship.
“all on board –next stop CitizenSHIP!” project is also about helping youth workers to develop long-term sustainable youth work programmes directed towards developing the competencies, young people need for active participation and citizenship in society. It is about creating direction for youth work more clearly, strategically planned and based on the needs of young people.
The general aim of the project is to create sustainable ways of youth empowerment through participation and practicing democratic citizenship at local level through various youth activities;
The following objectives will ensure the achievement of the main aim:
• To increase understanding of youth about active youth participation both in youth work and in decision making processes;
• To learn how youth critical thinking can be developed through youth projects;
• To develop awareness about democratic citizenship as a meaningful direction for young people participating in youth activities;
• To explore the nature of youth participation and instruments for is promotion among groups of young people who usually have fewer opportunities to be active in civil society or youth activities at local and regional level;
• To develop creative and attractive ways of citizenship education through youth work.

Main Themes:
The main themes of the activity are European awareness and youth participation through active citizenship.

Target group
Beneficiaries of the project are young people aged 16 – 28 years old from different European countries in need of a support in order to encourage their personal growth as citizens, to increase their development opportunities, to strengthen their active participation to the civil society. Groups of young people from each project areas are actively involved within the project, as direct beneficiaries of the main actions of the project.
Their involvement is possible through the “peer education and good practice transfer”: the young individuals benefit directly of the project actions (workshops and international seminars), being able, then, to transfer their experience to the people of their age within their communities, so to enlarge the impact of the project and to offer the positive results and the improvement of opportunities to a wider audience.

Methodology
Through non-formal education activities during local and international events (meetings, workshops, role playing, seminars, etc..) the project promotes and raises awareness of youth about European citizenship, as well as their awareness of life skills (social and transversal skills), ideas, goals and potentialities. The project path enables young people to become protagonists of their own social context, developing a strong sense of belonging to the local community, as well as to the European community.
The opportunity of visibility that project offers to young people allows considering them not only as target group but also as multipliers, facilitators, and peer educators of the topics of the project. The project allows participants to become more skilled and motivated to further participate in local and national initiatives in the youth field. Also, the participants will become capable to develop long-term sustainable work programs directed towards developing the competencies, young people need for active participation and citizenship in theirs societies.

Project activities
The activities foreseen are:
1. Local preparatory meetings in each partner country
2. European preparatory meeting involving representatives of each partner organization;
3. Creation of promotional materials in order to advertise the project;
4. Web page creation and project visibility activities through online tools (social networking pages, web-blogs, etc);
5. Local workshops and discussions which involve young people, aimed at developing a greater knowledge and awareness on the topic European citizenship;
6. European level campaign during European Youth Week to promote active European citizenship at local and national level;
7. Good practices manual and multimedia DVD creation;
8. Dissemination and valorization activities;
9. Evaluation meeting