“Educating citizens: Learning democracy through Social Action” (October 2018 – March 2021)

The Erasmus+KA229 project “Educating citizens: Learning democracy through Social Action” (October 2018 – March 2021) , aimed at developing social and civic competences among the students of the 4 partner schools from Sweden, Greece, Hungary and Spain (Vigo) through a learning journey that completed their social studies and prepared them for active participation in social and political life.

Our project followed the “Active citizens learning journey” method as presented by the British Council. This method consists of five levels/steps, leading the students towards active participation. This method included workshops, creative activities and study visits.

The method’s levels are the following:

Level 1: the ME , to form a strong sense of identity and culture.
Level 2: built around the dialogue between ME and YOU.
Level 3 : WE TOGETHER, to reinforce community and the sense of belonging and mutual responsibility, while identifying issues for action within the community.
Level 4: learning techniques and methods to plan and promote joint action, PLANNING A SOCIAL ACTION to be implemented in level 5.
Level 5 : CARRYING OUT A SOCIAL ACTION.

how was the prOject developed?

A significant number of families depend on social services and school canteens supported by the local council and parents’ associations to feed their children throughout the year.

A whole class together with the group of students (6) who would travel to Stockholm as well as present our social action during the third mobility to be held in our school last February 2020 carried out some research in our local community trying to identify diverse needs and problems. There were 4 different groups who identified 4 different needs. After presenting their results, all together defended their views and the final decision was taken democratically among them all: A significant number of families depend on social services and school canteens supported by the local council and parents’ associations to feed their children throughout the year. However, when schools close for holidays, these families live a dramatic situation as they don’t have enough resources to cover basic necessities.

The main objective was to find a solution to this problem by contacting the social agents and authorities and informing the community. Our students visited some local NGOs that help people at risk of social exclusion. They also telephoned parents’ associations and heard first-hand how these parents are not powerful enough to tackle with this problem.

However, while working actively and enthusiastically on this, the global declaration of a pandemic due to Covid-19 frustrated the reasearch and the following lockdown paralyzed our project. Despite this big setback, both our teachers and all our students kept working and held several virtual meetings so as to develop our social action. Finally, we all agreed on carrying out 2 complementary actions. Firstly, our students would write a letter to our local mayor, informing him about our project and the social action we had identified. This letter was composed and submitted by a group of students Secondly, another group of students would produce a letter which would be shared with all the local newspapers. We wanted to call the attention on this issue and encourage our politicians and social agents to collaborate in order to give a solution. Both actions were really successful as all the newspapers published one article during the lockdown highlighting the commitment of our students and echoing the tragic situation that many local families were suffering, especially visible during the whole lockdown. Similarly, our students received a letter from the local mayor congratulating their social values and promising a genuine involvement on this local problem.