Erasmus boosters

"<< Background >>We applied for the project to find an educational approach how to reach a maximum of adults in the member states to educate and enlighten them about the EU Values, legally garanteed in the EU in the Treaty of Lisbon of 2007 and bring education to these people about the many opportunities they could take especially because of their country being a memberstate of the European Union. We have identified a deficit in civic education that has led to EU-sceptical voting behavior and even to an exit from the EU (Brexit). We saw a need to react to hinder shrinking opportunities for freedom-loving people and to counteract unjustified prejudgement EU citizens are getting victims of. Once people got victims of prejudgements and indoctrination by EU haters it seems to be difficult to teach them directly as they reject this knowhow by be reliant on arguments from within their political bubble. We saw a need to reach these people indirectly by confronting them with the many Erasmus activities in their neighborhood, making the many Erasmus participants visible to them, as good practice examples for them to learn, that the European Union is a good thing and that they start to feel that they could also take such opportunities to enrich their lives.<< Objectives >>By implementing the project we want to find ways how to get the knowhow about the EU values to reluctant people by confronting them with Erasmus enthusiasts or at least profiteers in an discreet way to educate them to develop a certain responsibility for supporting EU Values and to question their prejudgements against the EU. Furthermore we wanted to achieve that more and more people will understand the many opportunities the EU offers to its citizens and residents. Although various EU and Erasmus plus activities are taking place all over Europe, they are nearly only visible to people involved in EU programs, while even direct neighbors or the general public have no idea such events are happening around them. Youth Exchanges, Training Courses, Volunteering teams, long-term European Solidarity Corps Volunteering projects or other EU initiatives are not recognized by local people, even though these activities bring a positive value to their lives. We wanted to develop one or more tools for educators and organisations taking part in Erasmus plus programmes to make their activities visible while they are performing their duties in the field. With these tools we aim to get education materials to teach EU reluctant people accordingly.<< Implementation >>We started with the activity ""Erasmus Boosters Competition"" with the intention to identify best-practices and ideas all over Europe to educate people about EU-Values. We did award the best ideas with prices after the implementation of an international vote. In order to utilize these ideas we performed our next activity the ""Evaluation of ideas and prototyping of educational approaches"". This resulted in the finding of nine principles how to reach people to teach them about EU-Values and we developed a prototype of discreet educational materials trying to use all these principles. The prototype we created did we call the ""Erasmus Plus Passport System and the Erasmus Life Books"". We did let print passports with NFC-Chips to spread the word about Erasmus and did set up two Erasmus Life Book examples in Athens and Bonn. In order to test our prototype and to get feedback from NGOs and the public we organized in Athens and Bonn two ""Open Fairs for promotion of Erasmus +"" as our third activity. In order to make our results accessible as an OER under CC-BY 4.0 to others we did as activity 4 the ""Creation of a best practice Manual for promotion of Erasmus +"". Our fifth activity was our ""Final Conference"" in Athens as symposium for experts.<< Results >>We did gain a lot of knowhow on how to educate the general public about the EU Values and how to spread the word about Erasmus plus and how to reach people to let them know about the opportunities they do have due to the existence of the European Union and the Erasmus programmes including the European Solidarity Corps. We developed 9 principles to be used in educational approaches to teach the EU values to reluctant or uninformed people and described them in our manual for others in order to use them. To not just remain in theory we created a prototype educational tool. The tool is our ""Erasmus Plus Passport"" and our ""Erasmus Life Book"", which could be combined to the Erasmus Boosters Passport System. Erasmus Participants can collect stamps from Erasmus activities in the passports. Furthermore the passports contain infos about the EU, the member countries and also about the Youthpass and the Europass. An integrated NFC chip enables the passport holders to spread their word and experiences about Erasmus all around Europe when travelling. To leave their messages we created Erasmus Life Books as receiving stations with an NFC reader to display their messages locally. We tested and discussed everything in our fairs and the conference."