De europæiske uddannelsesdage i Toulouse | Odense Bibliotekerne

Twice a year, the Young Europeans of Toulouse are organizing the “European scholar days”, which is a session of popular education about Europe for the children from Toulouse. We organize it through our pole of Europe By The Youth which is one of the major missions that make the identity of the Young Europeans movement.

It is organized locally, and all the members of the association can invest in it: this is a good way to have an impactful engagement, you are front of people who listens to you and at the end you can enjoy that they comeback to their house with a new knowledge about something that they will have to deal in the future.

The popular education is a key to help the future generations beside their school acknowledgment. For the past 5 years, the Young Europeans Toulouse and the Toulouse metropolis has joined forces with partners – like Europe Direct Toulouse and the Francas Occitanie – to offer a program of activities intended for young schoolchildren. This pedagogical workshop allowed me to integrate into the association's teams and to discover a new way of having an educational and militant action.

In October and in May (organized in the context of the “Joli Mois de l’Europe”, with a financial participation of the Toulouse Metropolis and the European Commission), within the framework of interventions and sensitization of primary school students – from 8 to 10 years old and a majority part from the priority districts of the metropolis – at museum of the city south, I organized a playful workshop. In this workshop, I managed a group of about ten pupils by making them learn and recognize the European geography thanks to a giant map: they had to replace the flags of the European countries, to find the right name of each of these countries and eventually to find the name of the capital of each one. The giant map is probably our best tool for our interventions, we can use it during all our events.

The other activity was a quiz where we mix fun facts about EU countries and some interesting facts about the EU itself. For example, the interesting fact that surprised the most the kids were the direction of the biggest institutions of the EU: the Commission and the Parliament which are both led by women. In contrary of the Nordic countries which have or had women leaders, southern countries like France never had a woman at the top of the state: it’s important to show that women have the same capacities to lead huge political institutions.

During these days, we had more than 100 children who participates to our workshops, this learn to me how to manage kids and to teach them. Having that kind of experience shows how it could be tough to be a schoolteacher and to manage a lot of people while keeping the same authority when you’re alone. This kind of activity is always better to do when by pairs, the teammate can help and take the leadership of the session, doing things together helps you go further!