The Europe 2020 Strategy identifies five headline targets to boost the development of the European Union in the areas of education, energy and environment, employment, research and development, as well as poverty. The Strategy can be regarded as the European policy to grow equitable societies, based on global respect, responsibility, and citizenship. Member states, civil society organizations, educational stakeholders are urged to take actions towards the fulfillment of the Europe 2020 Strategy and its five headline targets.
Although the interaction between nations, governments and economies have existed for thousands of years, today globalization, to use the words of Thomas Friedman, is “farther, faster, cheaper, and deeper”. Recent events unquestionably show that lives of men and women of this planet are affected by events happening thousands of miles away. As such, wars in North Africa and the Middle East have increased the wave of migration to Europe, have lately been the targets of religion fundamentalist attacks. There are many environmental repercussions such as the greenhouse effect, climate change, pollution and the exhaustion of natural resources. There is an increasing poverty in societies, forced migration, racism, xenophobia and conflicts. Europe is no world on its own and it is impossible for us to achieve the ambitious Europe 2020 aims without looking and reaching out to the rest of the world. The partners in this project believe that the Europe 2020 can be achieved only if we seed a sense of global responsibility among citizens. We need to raise awareness among individuals upon their joint responsibility for local, regional and international development, increase their understanding upon the interdependence of nations and open their eyes and minds to the necessity for global understanding, respect and responsibility. Hence, the need for Global Responsibility Education (GRE) as an international dimension in learning and teaching methods in both formal and non-formal education in order to move towards a better understanding of the current issues of the world, its impact at local and global level, is not only a need, but an ethical challenge in today’s realities.
To respond to the needs identified and to broaden the network of countries involved in the mainstreaming GRE we have created a partners consortium of 11 NGOs and schools from 9 European countries (Bulgaria, Romania, Serbia, Macedonia, Greece, Lithuania, Georgia, Poland and Italy), Turkey and Egypt and formulated the following objectives:
– To create a qualified team of 36 trainers (teachers and youth workers) trained in Global Responsibility Education;
– To implement the GRE learning methods among at least 330 students in the partnering countries;
– To introduce the GRE certification system among the partnering organizations;
– To certify at least 22 institutions (schools, public authorities and NGOs) with the Global Responsible Label in the partnering countries;
– To encourage creativity, responsibility and civil consciousness of young people (i.e such with disadvantaged background) through sharing and exchange best practices in GRE with their peers
– To build capacity of the partner organizations and other stakeholders reached within the lifetime of the project to provide GRE to pupils and young people in their countries.
Main activities:
1. ToT “Global Responsibility Education” -The core activity in the project is a 7-day long training of trainers (ToT), where the GRE training program will be piloted among the participants coming from 11countries. The total number of participants in ToT is 36 (33 trainees and 3 trainers);
2. Local trainings for students and certification activities on national level – in 11 countries (October, 2017 – February, 2018);
3. Youth Exchange “Think Global, Act Local “ (19-25 March, 2018)
The exchange will take place in the Municipal Youth Center Plovdiv. The total of 30 young people and youth leaders from 6 countries (Turkey, Serbia, Romania, Greece, Macedonia an) will take part in the activity. Half of the participants will be young people with disadvantaged background.