CITIZENRIGHTS Toolkit

Welcome!

KNOW

Module 1

Introduction 20 minutes

Introduction led by the NGO trainer

Note: This can be given as a classic presentation or in a format of your own choosing. This is laid out as it could be spoken to the class, however it can also be adapted and put into your own words.

Welcome to Citizen Rights! A vast gap exists between the rights guaranteed by the EU and the exercise of these rights. Unclear laws, disempowerment or fear of reprisal can prevent people from knowing and enjoying their rights. In the Citizen Rights project we want to look at how, when and where people in the EU can individually and collectively protect and advance their rights. We also want to see where they are prevented from exercising their rights and how transnational collaboration can imagine and build a future where rights are actively protected and extended.

The Citizen rights project for schools

This is your time!

You're a few people in a class but in the Citizen Rights project for schools you have the possibility to be much more.

 This project is a window on Europe: you're joining

students from ten European countries in this. Students from Bulgaria, France, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Portugal,

Poland, Romania, Slovakia and the UK.

The Citizen rights project for schools

You lead similar but different lives, give life to similar but different geographic areas but are united by the same rights!

 In the Citizen Rights project we want to find new ways for us all to work together for citizenship and human rights. One way we want to do this is to work with schools, universities and most

importantly you – students.  

We want to not only discuss with you the situation of rights protection in Europe, but more importantly to imagine with you how we can build a Europe

based on the protection and extension of citizenship and human rights. We also want this to be a chance for you to interact with and imagine rights protection with other students from across Europe, so where possible think about how you could communicate your idea without using lots of text or with out language at

all.

The Citizen rights project for schools

Who we are

We are running this in cooperation with European Alternatives (EA), which is a transnational civil society organisation and citizens movement

promoting democracy, equality and culture beyond the nation state. Through 7 years of activity throughout the continent, European

Alternatives has developed a unique model of citizen activism:

It is simultaneously transnational and very local

It is participative

It is creative and experimental

It is social, political and cultural

Chi siamo

The topics we want to cover with you are some of the most important rights issues in Europe today.

Citizenship: what rights do we have as an EU citizen and what rights do we have when we live in Europe but don’t have an EU

passport?

Migration: what rights do we have and what rights should

we have when we move within Europe and when we move

into Europe?

Discrimination: how does our status affect how we are

treated in the EU? How can we imagine a Europe that protects

rights equally for all?

The topics of the Citizen Rights project

The topics of Citi-Rights Project

The topics we want to cover with you are some of the most important rights issues in Europe today.

Privacy: when we post on social media or our picture is put online, what can we do about it? How do we talk about rights protection in the

context of government surveillance?

Social rights: what rights do we have to social support in the EU, what happens when we

move to other EU countries?

Citizen rights for schools: how it works

The most important part of this project is you, with your mind, your imagination, your creativity, your skills and this is a project where

collaboration is the key activity!

Are you ready for a big transnational gathering where we will share information, topics, creativity and peer-to-peer education?

The first thing you have to know is that in this interesting transnational trip you are supported by an external NGO trainer.

The role of the NGO trainer is to guide you through this session and a later one. We are also available to answer questions and to help you

through the project over the coming weeks.

Our project with youis formed of 3 modules:

The topics of Citi-Rights Project

Each module corresponds to a phase that makes up the educational process and which will lead you in building a change as European citizens.

KNOW ACT AND CHANGEUNDERSTAND

Citizen rights for schools: how it works

Students' educative performance

In the citizen rights project for schools, an important goal is to encourage you – students - to teach adults and other European students about citizenship and human rights using creative, experimental and innovative

languages.

At the end of each module you'll find you’ll be tasked with an educative performance to communicate to the Citizen Rights Project Community

the outcome of your collaborative work in your class and your city!

You could do this through:

The topics of Citi-Rights Project

But we’ll come back to this later.

recording a podcast and

using web radio

publishing a wall of tweets

producing a video

drawing comics using all the ways and forms your

imagination will suggest to you

creating animated slides

Citizen rights for schools: how it works

Why do we want you to produce an educative performancefor each step of the project?

Because it is a way to communicate to the other

students and the wider public and to build a transnational citizens community focused on the topics of the project

Because the educative performance is a way to

participate, to be active, to collaborate

Because people can learn from a single educative

performance and discover other information or solutions or languages to communicate

The community of the project Citizens Right and the online platform

To create a community and to share materials we created an online platform for the project that we ask you to give life to and that we hope you enjoy.

Why an online community platform?

To create a collaborative and transnational space for

European rights and citizenship culture

To build a database of open content knowledge, practices

and ideas produced by citizens about rights and

European citizenship

To promote international learning about the project

topics

The online student platform is a system for collaborative learning. It is based on "peeragogy", education and knowledge produced and consumed by peers collaboratively. The online community allows

everyone to upload materials, posts and communication products divided into topics. The web address for it is: citizenrights.euroalter.com/blog/

The 3 steps of the citizen rights educational process

KNOW

What is the European Union, European citizenship and rights?

What are the topics of the citizen rights project and what real life cases

correspond to them?

Which topic and case, among those that you'll read and discuss in your class, is more relevant or more interesting to

look at in more detail and why?

DEVELOP

Here you'll have the possibility to develop the topic and case you choose and to explain to other transnational students the results of your research.

This phase will be the opportunity to consult societal actors (the public,

college students, experts, associations) who work on the chosen case or to

consult the EU institutions.

Through this, we also want you to discover and suggest new ways to address specific cases related to

citizenship and human rights.

ACT AND CHANGE

This phase will be the opportunity to take the developed topic out of school, to encourage interaction with a larger number of people about the project.

On the website you’ll find two toolkits. ACT is a summary of how you can get

involved further in citizen rights issues, CHANGE is part of our Claim your

Rights! Campaign. We want your ideas on how citizen rights could be better

protected at the European level! We’ll gather ideas from all over Europe and the best idea will be presented to the

European Institutions in Brussels!

KNOW 10 minutes

Introduction led by the NGO trainer

Note: This can be given as a classic presentation. This is laid out as it could be spoken to the class, however it can also be adapted and put in your own words.

Citizen rights  

The core values of the EU are human rights

DignityFreedom

DemocracyEquality

Signed and proclaimed on the 7th of December 2000, the European Union Charter of Fundamental Rights is a single text that covers the whole

range of civil, political, economic and social rights of European citizens and all persons resident in the EU.

Citizen rights

Citizenship rights are automatically given to everyone who holds an EU passport. These include the right to petition the European Parliament, to vote for the European Parliament and to stand as a candidate at municipal elections in the Member State of residence (regardless of where someone comes from in the EU), as well as the right to live, study and work in another EU country.

Fundamental rights are much wider and closer to what are usually considered human rights. These include the right to privacy, freedom of speech and the prohibition on discrimination. These apply to everyone, but only when one of the EU institutions takes an action (including the main institutions: the Commission, Parliament and Council) or when an EU country is acting under an EU law, for example when an EU country is changing an EU law into a national law or when it is acting under a joint EU policy (like the common migration policy). Together, we call these Citizen Rights.

There are two kinds of rights protected at the EU level:

Citizen rights

The EU is an economic and political partnership between 28 independent countries that have given

part of their decision making and power to EU institutions. They have done this to gain collective

strength in sectors best addressed through cooperation.

The EU was founded in the aftermath of the Second World War by six countries - Belgium, France, West

Germany, Italy, Luxembourg, and the Netherlands. It has now expanded to include 28 member states

from across Europe.

The EU is run by four bodies: The European Council, which represents national

heads of states and sets the EU’s priorities and general policies. It has no formal power to make law.

Its presidency is held by the president of the European Union, currently Donald Tusk (Poland).

The European Commission is made up of one Commissioner per member state. It proposes new

laws and ensures that these are implemented by all member states.

The Council of Ministers represents the governments of the member states. It considers and approves the laws proposed by the Commission. It is

the Upper House of the EU.

The European Parliament debates and approves together with the council of ministers the laws

proposed by the Commission. It is the only European institution elected by the people (every five years).

It is the Lower House of the EU.

Other institutions include the Court of Justice of the European Union, the European Central

Bank and the Court of Auditors.

What is the European Union?

Citizen rights

According to the European Court of Justice, “EU Citizenship is destined to be the fundamental

status of nationals of the Member States”: this was introduced in 1992 by the Maastricht Treaty.

Article 9 of the Treaty of European Union states that: "Every national of a Member State shall be a

citizen of the Union. Citizenship of the Union shall be additional to and not replace national citizenship”. In fact, European citizenship is a supplementary

citizenship.

There are over 500 million citizens of the European Union. They are citizens of Austria, Belgium,

Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany,

Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, the

Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden and the UK.

The euro is the single currency in a free market for goods, services, people and capital.

Thanks to the abolition of border controls between most EU countries, people can travel freely

throughout most of the continent, easily working and living abroad.

 

European citizenship

Now, it's up to you!

Continue?

DEVELOP

Module 2

DEVELOP 5 minutes

Introduction led by the NGO trainer

Nota: This can be given as a classic presentation or in a form of your choosing. The presentation is currently written as directed to the class, but can be adapted to your own words.

Welcome to the second module of the Citizen Rights project for schools.

In this step of the process we want you to be active citizens, working with your classmates to find information and propose solutions on the topic you selected last time!

What we are going to start with today is to develop our knowledge of the topics we discussed in the last session, particularly thinking about how we can become active citizens on this topic and develop material to teach others about citizen rights.

An active citizen?

 Active citizens are people who think that citizenship is not a predetermined status that comes with your passport but an active practice to collaborate in making the world a better

place for all! 

Active citizenship is related to concepts like human rights, equality, inclusion, non-discrimination, diversity and social

justice.

An active citizen?

An active citizen thinks that sharing problems and solutions can contribute to improving public life;

An active citizen is different from a “passive citizen”, who lets others make decisions and is uninformed about public questions.

An active citizen is a civic monitor who collaborates with institutions in the common definition of a problem and wants to

work together to find a solution or change policies.

 Through the Citizen Rights project we want to work collaboratively to address

global topics at the local level and connect local level information to the global level,

through the Citizen Rights community.

In the Citizen Rights project we also want to open a debate about some of the most pressing

human rights and citizenship issues within Europe today and imagine collectively how we

can take human rights protection further.

Think globally, act locally

How to develop the chosen topic at the local level: the citizen

journalism approachCITIZEN JOURNALISM

Also known as public journalism, citizen journalism is a way of integrating journalism into the democratic process. It provides people with detailed news and information about the issues they care most about, thus creating public debate and fostering action. It is practiced by newspapers and radio and television stations in many parts of the world.

Born in the early 1990s, its core belief is that journalism should go beyond gathering and telling the news: it is about the empowerment of a community.

Journalists and their audiences are no longer spectators in political and social processes, but rather more democratically active citizens: people with responsibilities of self-government, rather than consumers to satisfy, a learning community that discusses issues with facts about how things work, to understand how they can frame their problems and what they see as solutions.

This kind of journalism can be used to raise public awareness of community issues, to offer citizens a chance to determine what makes news in their community through polls or forums, and to combine the power of the media to set political and social agendas with the power of individuals and groups to speak out about their problems - and hence influence decision-making processes.

Group division

Project managers 3 students

This is the group that has clear ideas and knows how to achieve

the goals of the project by encouraging others to get to the

goal together

This group is responsible for the development of the project,

coordinating and supporting the work of the other groups, communicating about

the project with the teacher and the external speaker and uploading the

material onto the Citizen Rights community page

ReportersMinimum 5 students

This is the group who loves to explore, analyse and discover

different points of view in a case

This group is responsible for consultation with different societal

actors, for background research and for conducting interviews

Story designersMinimum 5 students

This is the creative group that wants to experiment with new

forms and ways to communicate

This group is responsible for collecting the information provided by the

reporters and finding a creative way to share it with the global community

SO WHAT’S NEXT?

NEXT WE HAVE A NUMBER OF THINGS TO DO

Project managers:

This is particularly important for you in keeping the project on track, so listen up!

First it identify who is involved. If you look at Student Sheet: Who is involved? You will see that it lists a number of persons who could be involved in the project.

Using this sheet, in your group you need to think about what they do in relation to the topic you have chosen, what kind of information they might have that you could interview them about, who you could contact and any other thoughts you have.

This should take between 30 minutes to 1 hour and if you get stuck, use your reporters team to help you or get in touch with the NGO trainer or your teacher!

Step 3

After you have finished thinking about who is involved, then its time to go onto Story Development!

Using the information you’ve collected and the map of actors, now its time to decide what you want to look at in more detail and how you will do it.

This should take between 30 minutes to 1 hour.

For example:

1.Interview a citizen(s) to hear their story or opinion on the topic

2.Interview other students and ask for their opinion about your topic

3.Consult experts and get more information about a case

Step 4

4.Consult citizens and the local government about a specific incident that happened in your city that is related to your project

5.Ask local NGOs working on your topic for more information or support for your project

You can refer to the Student Sheet: Story Development for a reminder of this!

After that, the next stage is preparing for the interviews.

This is the moment of the Story Designers, who need to think about and propose a language to communicate the project.

Just like the media we produced after the first class, there are several ways to share the story you’re developing now.

Story designers, you should (as homework/in class) decide together which method from the Student Sheet: Communicating your project, you want to use and recommend it to your group.

In the next class, the group should discuss and agree on a method to use.

Step 5

Next come the interviews and research!

Reporters group – now it’s your time to concentrate. Once you have decided on the format for communicating your message, it’s time to decide how you will carry out the research. Reporters, you’ll be responsible for preparing the interviews or research and the whole group will help in carrying it out!

You can carry out interviews outside of school, using Skype, email or telephone. It depends on the medium you chose to present your research. If your goal is to consult a large number of students, you’ll probably use the face to face methodology and of course if you want to make a video, you need to make sure you meet the person face-to-face!

Step 6

And don’t forget you can carry out different interviews at the same time, dividing into smaller groups.

Putting it all together.

Once you’ve gathered all your research, the Story Designers group should bring all the information together into the chosen format and Project Managers, you need to make sure it’s uploaded onto the Citizen Rights page!

Once it’s all done, check out the work of the other schools online and look at the ACT and CHANGE online guides and get involved in taking it further!

Step 7

See you soon!

CITIZENRIGHTS