What were we doing to explore this?

As a partnership we created a methodology for bringing up global citizens and “tested” it during labs each of us did in their countries during 2022. Our methodology idea was to promote and educate Global citizenship education with a specific focus on one of its dimensions – Social-emotional learning with incorporation of digitization tools. All what we did was a result of a joint collaboration of an international partnership made by 7 organizations from different countries and backgrounds. We tried to bring together vast experiences in youth work some of the partners carried out throughout a decade, different backgrounds in research and education, and the vision of contributing youth workers’ on why global citizenship and global solidarity are particularly important today.

The objective behind our project was to create a non-formal learning lab cycle that will provide a comprehensive NFE framework with some elements of digitalization that is favouring learners-centre approach and facilitates reaching comprehension of global citizenship, attribution to the concept of global solidarity and creates environment for advancing one’s SEL level. In order to set up a quality methodological framework, our partnership has first undertaken a joint desk research on GCED and SEL in particular and a joint desk research on the digitalization of the NFE. Thanks to the joint desk researches we could first collect and learn the theoretical base on GCED and its dimensions and what is happening currently in the field of learning digitalization, review existing best practices in formal and non-formal education, interview our peers and elaborate databases both of existing NFE activities and on digital tools. We invite you to have a look on both deliverables if you’d like to have a deeper understanding of the topics covered by our project and better dive in these fascinating topics.

Once we started designing current methodology (during a team meeting in Trento, Italy in September 2021), we had a long discussion on what exactly shall we keep in the labs – it seemed challenging to squeeze so much of knowledge and possible activities in such a short lab cycle. We thus tried to look at it from the perspective of a young learner – our main target group. We agreed to keep the methodology simple and base it on the following principles: exploiting NFE as much as possible trying to bridge dynamic and fun activities on the topics given, incorporate digital tools and methods that are easy to use and do not require any specific software or preparation, but just a smartphone of a learner and at the same time, leave some space for youth workers’ individuality and creative potential. "More fun, less stress" was our motto: we wanted to make it exciting for both the youth workers who will lead the labs and the young people who will attend them.

DEE-GEAYS Timeline

• PROJECT KICK OFF

  We kicked off the project in February 2021 with an online meeting and followed it up with a meeting in person in Trento, Italy in September 2021. Thanks to the meetings, the partnership managed to get to know each other and develop a common framework of the work ahead: share roles and responsibilities for the outputs development, according to our skills and interests, define major milestones, discuss the national contexts for the future labs. In the next two years we have been meeting in Cordoba, Antwerp, Skopje and Aarhus in order to continue developing our project.

• Development of the Intellectual Outputs: IO1 and IO2

  The partnership then worked on the two Intellectual Outputs – in order to deliver quality platform, we agreed with the partnership that we first start with two deep desk researches: on the global citizenship education existing methods and on digitalization of non-formal learning. We really wanted to bring quality results!

  • IO1 – Joint desk research in GCE-SEL (global citizenship education and social-emotional learning as one of it’s dimension) aimed
    • to provide partnership with a comprehensive overview of the states of art in the field of global citizenship education focusing on the Social Emotional Learning dimension.
  • IO2 – Joint desk research in digital NFE
    • to provide an overview of the current states of art in the field of non-formal learning digitalization, in particular existing methods and tools that allow to provide quality non-formal e-learning.
• Development of the Intellectual Output IO3 and organizing LABS for young people

  After we concluded the two desk researches, we went off to the biggest project’s deal: creation of a non-formal learning methodology for GCE-SEL with focus on potential digitalization of this methodology. In particular, we wanted to create a lab (workshops) cycle that will help young people to get a deeper understanding of GCE-SEL and by the end of the cycle to help them think, act and feel like global citizens. After big and long discussions, we structured the methodology in 5 modules: gradually from Global Citizenship Education introduction to the understanding of Social-Emotional Learning and finishing the cycle with the concept of Global Solidarity (essential for a global citizen!)

  Each partner hence organized after 5 local labs on GCE-SEL for their target group – young people and collected the feedback from them in order to design methodology adapted to virtual learning. We had labs in South and North of Italy, Skopje in Rep. of North Macedonia, Cordoba in Spain, Antwerp in Belgium, Aarhus in Denmark and Cadca in Slovakia. The labs went great: absolute majority of the young people have rated their experience as very valuable and all of them pointed out clear understanding of what is GCE-SEL after.

• Create the podcast

  Another project milestone was trying to tell the outside world what is Global Citizenship Education and Social-Emotional Learning in podcasts. They now make part of the platform, enjoy!

• ONLINE PLATFORM YOU ARE IN NOW!

  • The next step and perhaps the major milestone of our project is the digital platform you are scrolling now. The platform consists of various educational materials on the topic of GCE-SEL but it is also open to the youth workers who would like to upload their own virtual libraries on the other topics (curious? Ask us how!)
  • This platform is the result of 2 years work of our international partnership: we tried to adapt the most valuable non-formal learning exercises to the online platform so anyone, anywhere can use it to better understand what is GCE. You can learn by yourself or you can do it in a group with your youth worker!
• Multiplier Events

  Each partner will have local multiplying events to promote non-formal e-learning and the digital tool itself. The project involves a number of associated partners on national levels that will be mainly involved in dissemination phase and support the multiplying events. In total the multiplier events shall cover participation of minimum of 300 persons within the partnership countries and more thanks to the online streaming. Stay tuned!