"CONTEXT2019 marks the year of the elections of the European Parliament. The results of the 2014 EU elections however show that the overall voter turnout was low and lowest in the population aged 18-24 years (cf. European Parliament “Post-election survey 2014”). Our network partners who work with young people daily experience that active citizenship has become yet another area of exclusion, especially for disadvantaged young people who struggle to participate in society anyway. Thankfully, the new EU Youth Strategy takes this topic seriously with its goals of engaging, connecting and empowering, especially disadvantaged young people (cf. European Commission 2018: EU Youth Strategy 2019-2027). These goals are key to the Europe3E project and set the agenda for the ways in which we want to encourage young people and youth workers to grow.The Europe3E project is designed as a follow-up project of the highly successful ""YourEP"" project, which ran from 2016-2018 (https://bit.ly/2TIvlMu). ""YourEP"" tackled the exclusion of young people in active citizenship by developing a political simulation game together with disadvantaged young people. Furthermore, it draws on the positive experiences with peer research in the equally successful ""Our Life. Our Voice. Young people and poverty"" project (https://bit.ly/2O5nK4k).OBJECTIVES, OUTPUTS & IMPACTThe Europe3E project aims to develop with the IO1 “Europe3E ” Europe and me – participatory photo voice research, IO2 “Europe3E – How to involve all youth in the European project” solid training material to be used by youth workers and youth practitioners in political and civic education. It will be available in all partner languages. Finally, the project will analyse and collate the experiences and knowledge generated by this working process into policy recommendations (IO3). The recommendations will build on the process and results of the peer-research of the young people and the training activities, in particular the simulation game. By giving young people agency, we want to make sure their perspectives and voices are heard. The youth workers and practitioners complement the recommendations by contributing with their expertise as well.Participating in the project will ensure that youth workers improve their professional competences across different areas of the European Competence Model for Youth Workers (https://tinyurl.com/y42xeroa). Most notably they will increase their competences in the areas of -designing programmes, -facilitating individual and group learning in an enriching environment-networking and advocating.The project aims also at engage young people who are furthest away from the political sphere, promote active citizenship and support social inclusion of young people with fewer opportunities. Through the project, the involved young people will improve:-Social, civic, intercultural, interpersonal and communicational competences;-Leadership and entrepreneurial skills thanks to their active role in the project;-their EU and general political awareness.PARTICIPANTSOur project partners work with young people facing different difficulties every day. Each project partner will identify young people that are facing multiple challenges in life to participate in the project as these youth will be likely to benefit the most from the Europe3E project. As youth work professionals, our partners have the methods and tools needed to recruit young participants who would usually not participate in such activities. Next to the young participants, the partners’ youth workers will also be involved in all activities. They will 1) empower the participants to be the main actors of this project exploring, exchanging and exhibiting their views of Europe and how it can become engaging for young people and 2) lead the work of the Intellectual Outputs by collating the material into 3 products. ACTIVITIES To reach our goals, we will set up groups of young people in each participating country to discuss the meaning of the EU from their own experience. Supported by youth workers, they take part in local meetings and Blended Learning activities (C1 and C2) that facilitate their understanding of Europe and the EU, and then find out more in their communities using the method of photovoice. Testing the EP simulation game during the second Blended Mobility will provide the chance for the young people to put their knowledge into practice. As mentioned above, youth workers will ensure to collate the experiences into the 3 Intellectual Outputs. The Multiplier Events (E1-E7) locally and a final conference in Brussels will give the young people the chance to discuss their research results and the knowledge gained with a wider audience, empowering them further to become change-makers in their communities and beyond. To ensure a solid management of the project and development of high quality products the project consortium will gather at 4 TPMs over the lifetime of the project."

In the context of the economic crisis in which we are, the unemployment of the youth is unacceptable, but beyond the fact of this situation, we consider that exist a change of paradigms than concern to the whole European citizen.Opposite to these challenges, we must multiply the spaces of dialog and co-creation of offers. Probably it would be necessary to check some practices and devices that accompany the youth in his emancipation. It is not about reducing the investment, but also changing the approach and making new and less stigmatized politics and methodologies and based more in citizenship. The project YouthLab tries to gather and to catalogue (with a wide number of partners in Spain, France and Slovakia) Good Practices for Juvenile Activation. Besides It is foreseen to organize and to stir forums with participative methodologies of creation offers that gather agents of youth, education, training and employment, taking also into account companies, labor union and young people.We think that the non-formal education can contribute a lot to the big institutions of the education and the employment. We will create a guide with key aspects of our concept of juvenile activation (generated in the forums: methodologies, formative aspects, proposals, indicators of impact and success) and we will realize news, documents and initiatives from the web of the project. We will accompany the process on formative stays of short duration and on local meetings of multiplication and diffusion. We hope that these proposals serve to enrich this moment in where it is necessary to reinvent the answers to the problems.

"CONTEXTCitizenship has become yet another area of exclusion, especially for youngsters with fewer opportunities, with tragic consequences: for instance, the low turnout of young people in elections, experienced both at EU and national levels, played a key role in the Brexit referendum outcome.Active citizenship, EU and political awareness, and Social inclusion are intertwined issues in the field of youth, and yet young people facing more difficulties than their peers (e.g. financial, educational, geographical, health issues, discrimination etc) are still underrepresented in initiatives fostering Political Education in general and EU Education in particular.This gap between youth with “more” or “fewer” opportunities is even more striking in one specific case: political simulations, a powerful tool involving young people in “make-believe” politics to teach them how political institutions work while promoting their civic participation. A lot of public and private initiatives offer such opportunities, but many obstacles make it more difficult for disadvantaged youngsters to participate (e.g. lack of information and awareness, participating fees, needed knowledge, language requirements, application process etc).OBJECTIVES & PROCESSThat is why YES Forum and its 9 partners, through the YourEP project, explored and promoted solutions to open political simulations in particular and political education in general to a wider audience.To do so, in 2017-2018, YourEP consisted of a mix of online, local and international activities which developed and implemented a political simulation of the European Parliament (EP) specifically designed to be Inclusive and Accessible, and therefore open to young people regardless of their personal background and potential difficulties. Later on, it shared lessons drawn from this experiment with all interested stakeholders.To better suit their needs, the #YourEPsimulation was designed with the active involvement of youngsters with fewer opportunities from 7 EU countries. They were accompanied by experienced youth & social workers, while the whole process was supported by the EU expertise of JEF Europe (Young European Federalists).METHODOLOGY & RESULTSYourEP unfolded into 3 phases.Phase 1 focused on the preparation of young participants, giving them the skills and knowledge to design a simulation method of the EP specifically adapted to their needs. Online activities and local meetings in each partner country empowered them to fully engage in a 5-days Blended Mobility meeting: in Brussels in November 2017, they received in-depth training on the EU and the EP, helping them to start co-designing their very own #YourEPsimulation (Report: goo.gl/v51K7e).Phase 2 finalized the design of and carried out the #YourEPsimulation. After online preparations, the young participants met once again in Strasbourg in May-June 2018: in the EP itself, they roleplayed as MEPs, journalists and lobbyists to get a real political European experience. It was a test for the method they developed: a successfully inclusive test, as all participants engaged in the simulation regardless of their diverse needs! (Report: goo.gl/BM4fbR)Phase 3 built upon this #YourEPsimulation experiment to advocate for more inclusive political education. To do so, ""Key Lessons for Inclusive & Accessible Political Simulations"" (Publication 1: goo.gl/P4S769) were widely shared across the EU youth field in general, as these lessons are easily transferable to other political education methods. “Recommendations to Unleash the full potential of political simulations” (Publication 2: goo.gl/fr8ZF3) targeted political simulations organisers in particular to help them opening their own events thanks to hands-on, experience-based solutions. Dissemination culminated in November 2018 with a Final Conference in Brussels (Report: goo.gl/6ekDjf).IMPACTYoung participants improved transversal skills such as:- Social, civic, intercultural, interpersonal and communicational competences;- Leadership and entrepreneurial skills thanks to their active role in the project;- Improved EU and general political awareness.Through the exchange of good practices underlying the whole process, partners and their youth & social workers learned new tools for inclusive political education, the main outcome being the #YourEPsimulation itself. And they also improved their own EU knowledge!Project results achieved a greater impact in youth formal and non-formal education through its main publications (cf. above):- The #YourEPsimulation method itself and its key lessons for inclusion were spread to other youth organisations to help them promoting the Active citizenship of youngsters with fewer opportunities. - Concrete recommendations based on the #YourEPsimulation were shared with organisations carrying out political simulations on a regular basis in order to advocate for a better inclusion of disadvantaged youngsters."