Democracy is fragile and not free. Formal education often lacks the capacity and tools to engage with adolescents on this topic in a clear and interesting way. The result is a distrust in the benefits of democratic social organisation and an increase in the radicalisation of youth, both in the Czech Republic and Slovakia. We want to support young people in engaging with the world around them and give educators and youth workers the tools to guide them through these complex issues. That is why we have created the three-year Czech-Slovak DemoHARE project, which runs from 2020 to 2023 and connects five Czech and Slovak partner organisations. Within the project, we will develop a methodology for youth education, using methods of non-formal education, experiential pedagogy and live-action role playing, train teachers and youth workers, test the programme several times in schools in Nitra and Kroměříž and verify its functionality with an impact study. We will conclude with a conference.
About the project
Democracy is fragile and not free. Formal education often lacks the capacity and tools to engage with adolescents on this topic in a clear and interesting way. The result is a distrust in the benefits of democratic social organisation and an increase in the radicalisation of youth, both in the Czech Republic and Slovakia. We want to support young people in engaging with the world around them and give educators and youth workers the tools to guide them through these complex issues. That is why we have created the three-year Czech-Slovak DemoHARE project, which runs from 2020 to 2023 and connects five Czech and Slovak partner organisations. Within the project, we will develop a methodology for youth education, using methods of non-formal education, experiential pedagogy and live-action role playing, train teachers and youth workers, test the programme several times in schools in Nitra and Kroměříž and verify its functionality with an impact study. We will conclude with a conference.
The DemoPlayer project builds on a similar Aktiv project, which also focused on promoting young people’s civic engagement. Now we want to go further in this theme and offer specific tools such as larp, which has been proven to increase the motivation of participants to take an interest in the topic.
Cíle projektu
- During the educational activities, young people will become aware of the risks of non-democratic regimes in the context of current events in society, their role in maintaining and promoting democracy, and increase their interest in becoming actively involved in society.
- Participating youth workers will learn how to use selected methods of non-formal and experiential education and larp to develop democratic competences in young people and learn how to work with the developed DEMO educational module. The involved teaching staff will learn the basic methods of non-formal and experiential education and learn to implement during the class supporting activities linked to the experiential learning module.
- The pilot cities Nitra and Kroměříž will take responsibility for the sustainability of the project’s proven activities in the context of the reality of their environment.
Activities
Spring 2021
- Training of youth workers
- Creation of a two-day experiential programme
- Creation of follow-up activities to the experiential programme for teachers
- Creation of an impact analysis methodology to verify the impact of education
Autumn 2021
- Pilot testing the functionality of the experiential programme on 6 groups
- Creation of a methodology describing the developed experiential programme
Spring 2022
- Training for teachers – how to implement follow-up activities in the classroom
Autumn 2022
- Implementation of 7 experiential programmes for youth
- Implementation of follow-up educational activities in 7 classes
- Independent implementation of further educational events under the auspices of the City of Nitra and Kroměříž
Spring 2023
- Final conference of the project
