Structured Dialogue:
What’s Up, Europe?

October 2018 – Mai 2019 in Hagen, Hattingen, Germany – Brussels, Belgium

Countries: Belgium, Germany

The extensive Structured Dialogue project consisted of several phases:

1. Local activities at schools in Hagen about European Parliament and Elections 2019.

2. Local English language courses for pupils, who took part at the international phase.

3. International youth exchange in Brussels, which included a visit to Parliament and joint work with the Brussels group.

4. Training Course in the format of video workshop in Hattingen on 26-28th of April. The participants could learn basic video editing techniques, which was put into action together. The results were presented on May 15th in KULTOPIA Hagen.

Participants of this training course in Georgia got to know the basics of cyber security, got inputs on big data, data harvesting, micro advertising and reflected on its consequences on democratic society. On the other hand, they focused on creating methodologies to educate young people in their local context.

The aims of this project were:

1. Goal setting – participants and project team will set indicators and objectives beforehand, to make sure there’s a quality standard for every intermediate phase activity. Participants have to meet minimum requirements of the hours and human assets in order to have a potent impact on the local level.

2. Coaching sessions – each trainer will be assigned to the participants and mentor them throughout the intermediate phase on designing, preparing and evaluating the activities.

3. Action! – participants will implement educational activities for and with young people.

4. Report – participants will evaluate and report their activities to the project team based on online form.

5. Massive Open Online Course – Erasmus+ Funding Opportunities for young people, participants have to complete the course as a hometask.

This project addressed the modern challenges of human rights in Europe which affect young people. Even with the bare eye can notice that hate speech, discrimination and rise of nationalism is now part of an everyday life and this is what puts the values of an open society at stake. EDC/HRE Charter of the Council of Europe identifies youth organisations and civil society organisations as one of the major potent stakeholders. Therefore, this project aimed to deliver the pedagogical and peer tools of human rights education to the youth workers and youth leaders and to explore and initiate innovative practices to tackle challenges with activism and education.

The project consisted of 2 main phases:

1. Training of professionals in human rights education in Georgia – exploring the basic principles, giving specific educational tools, situational analysis, action and campaigning tools.

2. Once back, participants were expected to exploit the learning outcomes and outputs into action. Participants created educational activities on human rights for their targeted youth audience.

The project took place in a camp in one of the national parks of Estonia at the Baltic Seaside. The idea of this Youth Exchange was to promote a „balanced healthy lifestyle” among youngsters, which had helped them discover the lifestyle that works best for them. Throughout the project, a number of outdoor activities, cooking lessons, hiking and sports activities were held. During the project, participants learned about the positive and negative aspects of being a professional athlete and having a serious diet.

The project addressed such pressing issues as conflicts on the border between Russia and Ukraine, refugees, migration problems, as well as the activities of peacekeepers. These topics were realized and worked out with the help of such methods and workshops as Theater of Sense, Storytelling, Black Rhetoric and Fake News.
Participants had a nice trip to the Cossack Village and the Black Sea. They learned more about the Southern Russian culture.

During the youth project the fundamental European values were discussed with young people. An important point in this regard is that many of the young people involved in the project come from countries where democracy is only on paper or where democratic values are seriously endangered. The main focus of the project was the work in creative workshops:
1. Theater-workshop was led by the stage director Gandhi Chahine, who works with the methods of Forum Theater.
2. Music-workshop was led by a rapper and youth worker Ertugrul Öztaskin. The participants wrote their own songs with him and presented on the Gala-night.

3. Media-workshop was organized by common work of leaders from Germany and Ukraine and was about making video and social media activities.

4. "Nonviolent communication"-workshop by a teacher and youth worker Pompei from Romania focused on the rejection of violence and the development of forms of response to youth group violence and non-violent behavior during social protests.

5 Workshop "Live Action Role Play" by mental health expert Anna from Belarus was devoted to conflicts and how they can be overcome in a game form.

Besides the seminars and workshops participants visited the exhibition about the Earth in Gasometer-museum in Oberhausen and crossed the German-Dutch border on bikes during the excursion to Nijmegen in Holland. 

Two of our EWE members spent a really productive time in Ferrol (Galicia, Spain) at the "Speak Factor" Training Course, which was organized by the EWE-partner Xeración. During the week they gathered skills of the perfect speech presentation. Moreover, the group visited the Galician parliament in Satiago de Compestela where they had the chance to observe a real political debate and also to get a "Backstage"-view of it.

Starting as usual with getting to know each other and Team building activities, day by day participants were digging deeper into the topic of participatory elements in NGO’s. Board games simulated them what is needed to implement such things as campaigns or projects and simulations symbolized the different structures of NGO’s. They got to know about some interesting tools, making management, participation and communication in organizations easier. After all this hard working, participants enjoyed evenings together in the city of Krakow and visited the most famous sights.

"Europe on the Board" - seminar in Berlin, during which participants created board games developing EU citizenship knowledge and active attitudes of young people in general.

Main Contents and activities:

• Analyzing the history of Europe, searching for events that have significant consequences on today's life.
• Raising awareness on common European identity.
• Learning how an interactive games can be used for the educational purposes.
• Developing board games for dissemination project conclusions.