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THE PROCESSES OF LOCAL GOVERNANCE AND THE ROLE OF LIFELONG LIFELONG LEARNING IN THE PROMOTION OF THE ACTIVE CITIZENSHIP
In our pluralistic and democratic societies, it is fundamental to raise awareness among European citizens on the importance of acquiring shared values, in order to play an active European citizenship, which is respectful of cultural diversity, as well as founded on common EU values as defined in article 6 of the EU Treaty and in the European Union Charter of fundamental rights.
Since 1997, Education for Democratic Citizenship and Human Rights (EDC/HRE) have been priority areas for the Council of Europe and calls in this direction have been elaborated in all subsequent Councils with the aim to promote the educational systems of active citizenship and democratic participation through specific programmes and the realization of relevant initiatives at European level (2005 European Year of Active citizenship).
Particularly, the social dynamics of the processes of inclusion/exclusion aim to the strategic value of education and training policies as essential factor for the promotion of local development, seeking in the local sphere the possibility for communities to take renewed possession of the decisions concerning them.
Therefore, it is necessary to transform further these educational policies into practices and methodologies to open to the most diverse issues related to the 'common good/s' and their governance and use, for future generations as well, in order to increase the participatory and decision-making competences of all European citizens. This is particularly true for adults who interact, in addition to educational institutions and family, with all kinds of other complexities throughout their lives and need to be supported in the understanding of the new dynamics and consequences of democratization, which often risks to cause the exclusion of those wide citizens categories, who are lacking of the basic participatory competences and information.
The basic premise of our Project sees in Lifelong Learning both a fundamental right to active citizenship and one of the main tools of participation aiming to address the entire participation process to different local aggregations, as well as to focus on those social and personal skills which are useful to put into practice this process and to cross through all and every kind of content generated as a result.
Thus, starting from the awareness of the relevant role played by Lifelong Learning in the promotion of active citizenship and of the democratic participation in the decision-making and local governance processes, the European Grundtivig Multilateral project 'LANCES Learning in Action for a New Citizenship Education System' - which has been realized with the financial support of the EACEA Agency in 2008 (142137-LLP-2008-IT-GRUNDTVIG-GMP) - is finalised to the development of educational paths and opportunities in order to increase the active participation of all European citizens of all ages and social-cultural backgrounds in the practices of local development and governance inside the respective local communities through the direct involvement of public and private local actors operating in this field.
The project (2008-2010) is coordinated by Upter-Popular University of Rome, in partnership with the following European organisations: Speha Fresia (Itay), Institut FBI (Austria), DVV International (Bulgaria), AESD (Romania) e Sozial.Label (Germany) - has a biennial duration biennale (October 2008 - September 2010).
The project educational offer - addressed to different targets as citizens, teachers, trainers, facilitators, institutional stakeholders and private actors - presents a series of informative and training initiatives at local level (interviews, public meetings, methodological workshops), as well as the experimentation of training participatory modules mainly focused on four steps of the involvement process: 1) Information (presentation of issues related to the local development, information on participatory methodologies and skills, on alternative solutions); 2) training (achievement of skills and knowledge to be properly used in the different phases of the decision-making process according to the different level of involvement of the interested actors; 3) consultation (democratic identification and evaluation of alternative solutions and proposals presented during the simulation of specific thematic debates); 4) decision (elaboration of possible solutions and decisions, achievement of participated and shared decisions, as well as of common local action plans).
The methodogical approach is active, democratic, interactive, critic, cooperative, participatory and transversal and it is further supported by a virtual learning platform, which, finalised to the achievement self-training processes, is particularly addresses to young users represented by students and trainers.
During the first year has been experimented the participatory EASW 'European Awareness Scenario Workshop', which - validated at European level and structured to facilitate the elaboration of 'utopic visions and ideas' with the support of specific thematic scenarios - is particularly useful to achieve participated and shared solutions among different opinions existing in different interested groups.
| Finally, the project LANCES will produce the following outputs and activities: two research reports on good participatory and educational practices at European level, the virtual ODL learning platform, a series of training modules on active citizenship, a training handbook with didactic and methodological tools for the educational staff (teachers, trainers, facilitators and operators of the local integrated systems), the project website. |
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Contacts:
Isabella Di Stefano (project coordinator)
Tel. 0039-06-69204354/25
Fax. 0039-06-69204354
isabella.distefano@upter.it
Project website:
www.lances.eu.com
www.upter.it
This website reflects the views only of the author, and the Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein.
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