Have Your Say

New Ways to European Citizenship Literacy for Adults

What this project is about

Many citizens in the EU are ill-informed about what the EU is, what it does, and how decisions in the EU are made. Mistrust into the idea of international cooperation, and recourse to nationalistic doctrines are growing in many of the 27 EU member states. So-called euroscepticism is widespread not least amongst less educated.

In the Have Your Say project we address these problems by developing innovative forms of educational activities for low-skilled adults to help them re-assess their attitudes towards the EU. We help them get into a process of reflexion, discourse, and fact-based thinking. We try to do this in an activating, communicative, possibly joyful and inspiring way.

We test such approaches in 8 pilot courses in 7 European countries. We focus out-of-standard-classroom activities including games, interaction, movement, creativity. They will be applicable in other adult education contexts as well.

The project title – Have your Say – indicates that this is not about forcing an opinion on people. It is about giving people space and freedom to formulate and express their thoughts, leading them through a process of testing these thoughts in interaction with others, and help them underpin opinions with verifiable facts rather than hearsay or popular myths.

We expect that this will eventually lead to a shift of attitudes in most participants, but this is not an obligatory result. What we are aiming at is that participants leave the pilot projects with increased ability of facts-based thinking and reflection on the motives of their attitudes and opinions. This will strengthen European civic education on a basic skills level.

This is an Erasmus+ project: it is a co-ooperation of eight adult education organisations from 7 countries. The project is funded through the European Union's Erasmus+ programme ("Strategic Partnership in Adult Education").

The project started in October 2019 and will be finalized in June 2022.