EFIL is a member of the Liaison Group of the European Economic and Social Committee, the voice of civil society in the European Union, and we actively participated in running the programme of the 2018’s edition of the European Civil Society Days.
The Civil Society Days’ theme was Citizenship, Democracy & Culture in digitalised Europe and EFIL contributed to two workshops held at this event: Education and Culture: a synergy for European identity in all its diversity in cooperation with Culture Action Europe and Lifelong Learning Platform, and Identities and Polarisation in partnership with the European Volunteer Centre and with the participation of the consortium running Erasmus+ Virtual Exchanges.
We have shared practices and ideas on how intercultural encounters can happen in the digital world, what is needed to make them effective and the role of non-formal education in preventing polarisation and developing skills such as critical thinking, empathy, openness to diversity. We provided also the example of the project ‘Developing Intercultural Competence through E-learning-DICE’ that we are currently piloting.
The main conclusion is that synergies among education sectors and between education and culture are essential to ensure outreach to all citizens when raising awareness on these topics, and that facilitation and media literacy are they key factor for online intercultural exchange.
You can read here the final recommendations gathered from the parallel workshops at the event.
For more information: elisa.briga@afs.org