More citizen competencies, little active citizenship
ECORYS and Verwey-Jonker Institute have evaluated the YOUTH Community Action Programme 2000-2006 for the European Commission. The evaluation report has recently been published on the EC website. The European YOUTH programme aims at young people and youth organisations from EU Member States, EFTA and pre-accession countries. It tries to help young people in their development by providing exchange projects and volunteer work.
In these projects, youths get to communicate and work together around specific themes like sports, art and culture, social exclusion, youth delinquency, the environment and others. The recently completed evaluation by ECORYS and Verwey-Jonker Institute shows that the programme improves citizen competencies, positively influences job orientation and contributes to a higher sense of solidarity and a common sense of being a European citizen. The programme falls short however, when it comes to reaching individuals with fewer opportunities or promoting active citizenship.
The evaluation of the programme was carried out by ECORYS and ECOTEC (ECORYS in the UK) in cooperation with Verwey-Jonker Institute (Utrecht) for the European Commission (DG EAC).
For this evaluation ECORYS conducted surveys under youngsters and organisations that participated in the programme, the participating youth workers and the national institutes responsible for the implementation of the different measures. This information was complemented with case studies in ten countries, interviews and desk research.
The full report can be downloaded from this website.
Ecorys: Sacha Koppert, T +31 10 453 86 97; E sacha.koppert@ecorys.com
Verwey-Jonker Instituut: Ida Linse, T +31 30 230 07 99; E ilinse@verwey-jonker.nl
