Citizens' Weekend Praha
25 - 27 November 2005

Imagine....
In Berlin we clearified what Citizens of Europe actually is. Now the next step will be to set concrete aims for the next months and years.

In the following fields we want to become a professional organisation. Therefor we tried to determine what they will be like:

... the best scientific seminars

Imagine: Which are the topics Citizens of Europe should work on, what is most interesting, thrilling, demanding for Europe as a whole today?

As a result, we agreed that there could be:

a) projects aiming to define and to discuss what could be called a "European Approach" to different things, such as:

• human rights
• minorities
• security
• economic & social affairs
• development policy
• extremism, religion
• ...

b) projects dealing with "being European", in particular addressing aspects like:

• citizenship
• direct democracy
• European publics
• European discourse
• education
• nationalism vs. patriotism
• ...

c) projects addressing the reasons for the existence of the European Union ("Why EU?") and the impact of its existence on

• regional and local affairs
• situation of neighbours
• education and schools (seminars for teachers)
• ....

... the best best online tools

Imagine: The best and most helpful online platform, which can be used by many people constributing to the same project while being at different locations. What makes the life of active people easy and their work professional?

The participants agreed that there should be a focus on people who use online tools in their projects without deeper IT insight. Right in contrast to them the IT experts working on particular tools usually do not have too much project experience. Thus is is a big challenge to develop easy to use online tools which really support project work and which really will be used by the people active in developing and realising Citizens' projects.

... the best training programmes
Imagine: What could the ideal project management training look like? What kind of people should be addressed? Which are the skills to be trained?Which kind of trainers should be invited? Who could be possible partners and supporters?

The participants of this workshop agreed that on the one hand teaching on the European Union and on European Citizenship could be done. On the other hand there could be various activities aiming to foster mutual understanding and good relations in Europe, such as

• building intercultural bridges
• encouraging people to work in different parts of Europe
• teaching tolerance and acceptance
• involvement of family activities
• developing international activities or even NGOs
  
  

Report of the workshop (pdf-download)