<< Background >>Young people and especially those with fewer opportunities have been strongly affected by different economic crises and recessions, the last one being due to COVID pandemic that considerably impacted their perspectives of future and created a general distrust toward policy makers. Indeed, it is undeniable that, since the Covid-19 pandemic, a big portion of citizens have a negative perception of the EU. This negative feeling is further triggered by the loss of jobs and lack of welfare measures to sustain our citizens during these hard times. This situation is negatively affecting our youth (our future) which is constantly undermined by fake news and negative messages from any sort of media. Different Eurobarometers published since 2016 show that youth feel, more than others, marginalised from their economic and social lives, they don’t think that their voice is being heard. While working with youth, partners face the limited understanding of youth about how the Union and its institutions work. They observe that too many of them do not know their EU capitals or ignore the difference between the European Council or the Council of Europe. Meanwhile, 90% of youth respondents to Eurobarometer (1) say that it is important for young Europeans to learn about the EU and how its institutions work. They consider that social networks represent progress for democracy. This generation is rather interested in practical and directly applicable knowledge than theoretical speeches, and is used to dealing with the latest available ICT as entertaining. Young people lack easy access to tools (such as games, mobile applications) or initiatives, which help them to better know and understand the EU and its institutions.As a consequence, many youths, especially those belonging to groups at risk of exclusion, are unaware of the opportunities that EU programs can offer them. To answer this need, workers and volunteers supporting youth lack innovative teaching material, which they can use to cover this lack of knowledge. As youth support organisations, we need to improve the way we explain and publicize the opportunities that the EU offers, thus helping to better understand the EU and its values. As an answer to this situation, the EU Values project was born out of the need to encourage young people to become active citizens, agents of solidarity and elements of positive change for communities across Europe, inspired by EU values and European identity.Knowledge of the EU, its origins and how it works, as well as its member states, will lead to greater respect, understanding and cooperation among European citizens. In addition, this greater knowledge will encourage young people to form their own opinions and have the necessary knowledge to participate in their communities or the Union's political and social life. To summarize, EU values aims at following the main recommendations of the EU Youth Strategy 2019-2027. Europe cannot afford wasted talent, social exclusion or disengagement among its youth. Young people should be architects of their own lives and contribute to positive change in society. (1) https://www.europarl.europa.eu/at-your-service/es/be-heard/eurobarometer/european-youth-in-2016<< Objectives >>The main objective of EU VALUES Project is to enhance the youth understanding of the EU and foster a sense of belonging to it, besides preparing them to participate in their communities or the Union's political and social life. Through our results and activities we want to achieve the next objectives:- Better knowledge about EU and its values, by providing training content for youth, and organizations and stakeholders that work with or for youth.- Promote the civic participation of young people, giving them the necessary tools to be agents of change capable of actively influencing their environment, being the ones who participate in the improvement of society.- Facilitate the inclusion of young people belonging to groups at risk of social exclusion, by participating in training workshops on the European Union.- Promote citizen coexistence and social cohesion among young people from different origins and realities.- Promote innovative practices and social transformation, through the creation of guidelines and methodology to train young people in the values ​​of the European Union and its history.Thanks to EU Values, participants will be able to know the history and values of the EU and know how to transmit them by actively participating in their communities.<< Implementation >>This project will involve 6 partners from 5 countries (Greece, Spain, Netherlands, Italy and France), who will work together addressing young people (18-29 years old) and all people in general who work with the E+ program in the development of a youth competence profile that recognise the values and institutions of the European Union, becoming an agent of change, working on the development of associated competences, linked to citizen’s participation on the one side, but also to the acceptance and application of some of our key values of inclusion, diversity, wellfare, sustainability.These activities will be:- Development of 3 main project results: an EU Framework of Knowledge for Youth, an Online Training Course and associated Teaching Notes and an Educational Game. They will together form a coherent and complete training set focusing on EU values knowledge and the tools that enable people to become leaders of change, addressing directly our final target, the youth, as well as their trainers with associated materials that will help them in the exploitation of our products.- Piloting activities, EU Values will involve our target groups all along with the project implementation. It is planned that both the online course and the educational game will be tested by our target audience. In addition, a panel of external evaluators will review some of our activities for permanent feedback.- Sustainable events will be organized in each country at the end of the project as a way to promote the results achieved.- Use of ICT as a catalyst for the project activities impact: our main results will be produced in digital and interactive formats.- Focus on international activities, being in line with an international scenario for shared values and heritage.- And of course, all those activities will be supported by an efficient management system that will itself be designed with the idea of reducing the impact to the minimum, meaning fewer transnational meetings, more virtual meetings, a no-papers dissemination strategy, the optimization of online management tools, and a continuous reporting effort to spread our achievements.<< Results >>To achieve our objective, we will prepare training material for young people since it is the generation who should lead the change and begin to build a European society that is more aware and prouder of the values ​​that unite us. In addition, we will prepare guidelines that will help people working on youth support to transmit the project's training content to youth, focusing especially on groups at risk of exclusion who do not have easy access to this type of training material, and migrants, whom we want to welcome and integrate into the European Union, making them participants in our history and values.This will be achieved through the production of 3 main results:R1: EU Framework of Knowledge for Youth. The objective of this result will be to create a framework through which will be reviewed the current level of knowledge of youth about the EU values and assess for their further needs. The study made thanks to the involvement of our two main target groups in the frame of a survey and focus groups, will focus on the perceptions of youth about the EU, including awareness of its role, institutions, major policies, opportunities, as well as on their awareness about the eventual gap of knowledge and training needed to increase their competences, and what they would need to become more trustful and engaged in the EU project. At least 360 representatives of our target groups will be involved in this activity. An online interactive report will be created, including a mapping of the places that promote EU actions in each partner city. This framework will address the youth themselves, looking for information, but also those working with them, being Youth assessors, counsellors, educators, association and NGOs who will use it as a source to design future training pathways for their youth members, to integrate into their activities with youth. To make it more attractive, it will have a form of interactive resource within the project website and will reveal the most needed set of knowledge, skills and attitudes needed to know the different EU values and Institutions. R2: Online Training Course and Teaching NotesTaking R1 as a basis, partners will develop a training course, including theoretical contents supporting the increase of knowledge and general culture about the EU, and, as a second main pillar, modules that treat the importance of participating in the EU citizenship life for democracy. In parallel to this training, partners will develop Teaching Notes, using a mixture of methodologies in training aimed at young people working collaboratively, promoting citizen coexistence and social cohesion among young people from different origins and realities. R3: Educational Game APPPartners will develop an educational Game which will include:- Interactive activities that simulate the different institutions of the European Union, so that young people can learn, play, how the different organizations work.- A tool with which, through questions and answers, you can acquire and practice knowledge about the European Union, and the identified skills and competencies to boost citizen participation.The expected impact on the target group, as a result of these activities, is to change the current situation of youth. Participants will be able to become actors of their present and future, raising their sense of initiative oriented toward the social European values, applicable in any area of their daily life, besides preparing them to participate in their communities or the Union's political and social life.