Volunteer scheme gives birth to a new generation of active citizens

Date: 12/11/1998

The EU is expanding the opportunities for young Europeans to live and work in other member states. Renée Cordes reports

MATTHEW Williams, a 20-year-old college graduate from Cornwall, England, had never lived in another EU country until this summer.

Since August, he has spent three days a week helping to plant trees in rural Denmark and build a shelter where young people can hold meetings and public rallies. The rest of the week he teaches English to Danish children aged 12 to 15.

Williams, a volunteer at the Danish Gymnastics and Sports Association, is one of more than 500 youngsters aged between 18 and 25 currently working for non-profit-making organisations and communities abroad through the EU's first-ever European Voluntary Service (EVS) programme.

After sending 2,500 young people to other member states as part of a pilot scheme, the European Commission is now moving its plans for a transnational voluntary corps into full gear and aims to send 8,000 youngsters on similar projects over the next two years.

Students who participated in the pilot project worked with elderly, homeless and disabled people, and helped to organise public seminars on the single currency.

The goal, say officials, is to create a generation of citizens active at both the local and European level.

"We cannot afford to have young people who will be passive citizens tomorrow," insists Alexandro Tsolakis, head of the EU's task force on human resources, education and youth information, which coordinates the EVS programme. "We don't just want to tell them Europe is nice. The whole point of informal education is for young people to meet, to reflect, to understand."

In Williams' case, this approach seems to have worked. "I think I now know a lot more about other people's cultures, about a different way of thinking," he says, adding that the experience has also increased his awareness of the EU. "I think it is important to be part of Europe."

That is exactly what the Commission's education officials want to hear.

"Europe is investing in its young people," said Education Commissioner Edith Cresson when she unveiled the programme. "It wishes to provide them with a new adventure, one which matches their commitment and pursuit of solidarity."

Those sentiments are echoed by many working in the EU institutions who believe more could - and should - be done to educate young people about the Union and its benefits.

They can, however, take some encouragement from a Eurobarometer survey carried out last year which suggested that far more youngsters aged 15 to 24 have a positive view of the Union than a negative one.

When asked what the EU meant to them, more than one-third said it meant the freedom to move within the Union's 15 member states and a more prosperous future thanks to a better economic situation, and just under one-third mentioned job creation. Only one in seven cited negative factors such as "a lot of bureaucracy", and only one in eight voiced fears about a loss of cultural identity.

The survey also suggested, however, that the EU institutions are playing only a minor role in educating youngsters about the Union. It found that the majority still get most of their information from television (nearly two-thirds said TV contributed most to their understanding of their rights and responsibilities as EU citizens), with schools or universities relegated to second place in all member states except Luxembourg, and the EU institutions cited by less than one in ten as their main source of information.

While the Commission promotes teaching about the Union in schools, it believes the best way to reach young people is through informal exchanges such as EVS.

Earlier this year, Commission officials unveiled proposals for three new five-year programmes to come into force on 1 January 1999, including EVS. The others are Youth for Europe, a scheme which will involve nearly 600,000 young people, and Opportunity for Europe, which will allow EVS volunteers to take up paid or voluntary work after they complete the programme.

But while such schemes are helping to foster a greater understanding of Europe among youngsters, and youth organisations applaud the aims of the programmes, they warn that they will be far from easy to achieve.

"European citizenship cannot be created overnight," says Bart Neerscholten, an economics graduate student from the University of Rotterdam and European project manager for AEGEE Europe, an organisation involving more than 15,000 students which seeks to promote the idea of a unified Europe.

The EU relies on youth organisations like AEGEE Europe, which itself sponsors seminars on various topics related to the single currency as well as an annual essay competition, to inform young people about its various programmes.

This approach seems to be having some success. About 7% of the youngsters questioned for the Eurobarometer survey said they belonged to youth groups - more than double the number involved in political parties or trade unions - and about 10% said such organisations were their main source of information about the EU.

WHILE the Commission seeks to reach out to young people primarily through exchange programmes such as EVS, it also aims to get its message across to students through formal channels by, for example, sending out speakers to schools and training teachers in using the Internet.

"If the kids understand it and the adults don't, the kids will want to show off," says one Commission official, expressing the hope that youngsters will pass on their knowledge about the EU and the euro to their parents.

But the Commission stresses that it is up to individual member states to decide whether they want to include the single currency in their teaching objectives. "We cannot, from Brussels, inject European studies into national curricula," says one official.

The institution has also proposed a 60% increase in three youth exchange programmes which combine study abroad and work experience, calling for a 3-billion-ecu budget for 2000-2004.

Of this amount, 1.4 billion ecu would go toward the second phase of the Socrates programme to put a greater emphasis on adult learning, and 1 billion towards the Leonardo da Vinci programme, which seeks to promote students' and teachers' access to multimedia. A further 600 million ecu would be devoted to education programmes and youth centres.

The Austrian presidency has said it does not expect agreement on these funding plans before the end of its presidency, with several member states likely to oppose the proposed increases.

"There is no disagreement on the impact of the programmes, but the budget is a difficult point," says one diplomat, who nevertheless predicts that a compromise will be struck.

One development which could, in the long run, encourage more young people to take an interest in the EU is the election of more young MEPs, like Veronyca Palm, to the European Parliament.

"This Parliament should be a mirror of the people who are living in Europe," said the 25-year-old Swede just a few days after taking her seat as an MEP and becoming the Parliament's youngest member.

The Commission also hopes that many more youngsters will follow in Matthew Williams' footsteps.

Matthew himself, who plans to continue doing voluntary work after he finishes the EU programme in February next year, is a shining example of the success of the EVS project in broadening young people's horizons and fostering a community spirit. "I would like to travel some more and teach people in different parts of the world," he says.