School of Active Citizens

"""School of Active Citizens"" is a project of 36 months duration coordinated by YUPI organization in Famalicão, Portugal, in close partnership with other portuguese partner (Agrupamento de Escolas de Gondifelos), Poland (Semper Avanti and Zespol Szkol Dwujezycznych w Zmigrodzie), Slovakia (Agentura Pre Rozvoj Gemera and Evanjelické Gymnázium) and Romania (Asociatia feedback PM-Brasov and Colegiul Tehnic Transilvania Brasov), for a total number of 1700 young pupils and more then 140 youth workers and teachers in the 4 European countries involved (140 teachers and youth workers and over 60 students had the chance to engage in international learning experiences). The partners are schools and non governmental organizations already experienced in working in close cooperation for a better integrated system of education for young people, combining formal and non formal learning. ""School of Active Citizens"" aims at contributing to the recognition of the importance of cooperation between non formal and formal education systems in order to offer the young pupils a more integrated education and allow more adequate strategies to integrate young people in the society. The partners are coming from disadvantaged areas of their countries, where geographical, social and economic obstacles are conditioning the development of young people and the mobility experience for learning, especially for young girls. The three topics chosen by the partners for the local activities in close cooperation between the non formal and formal sectors are 1) gender equality and inclusion of young people with diverse cultural background; 2) entrepreneur citizenship and sense of initiative for the community and 3) local governance and participation of young people in decision making. These topics are channels on how to involve young pupils in activities supported by youth workers and teachers inside classrooms and schools.Our main goal is to create an international network of partners interested and cooperating for the recognition of combining non formal and formal educational for a more comprehensive education alternative for young pupils, therefore contributing for a better development of the local community. We act at different levels to achieve this goal: local activities under the three topics, coordinators meetings, staff training events for youth workers and teachers, short term exchanges of groups of pupils and a final conference to disseminate the outcomes and intellectual outputs, as well as Youth & Participation tours (Multiplier Events) in all countries involved to reach a higher number of local partners interested in mainstreaming the tools.The outputs created during the implementation and closure stage of this project are: a publication with results of the research on ""Is gender OK? - a guide for a gender friendly school"", a pedagogical toolkit about local governance and decision making in school, a referential training for an online course for teachers and school staff on Diversity and Intercultural learning, a training course for summer camp animators in all countries, a guide with a methodology to implement participatory school budgets (pilot and mainstreaming) and a referential training program on Education for Human Rights in the school context. All these tools will allow the improvement of quality of practices from all professionals involved and also contribute to the sustainability of this project after the funding ends and the dissemination of results towards other interested partners."