The right to be part of the solution

The Europe Region of the World Association of Girl Guides and Girl Scouts (WAGGGS) has been active for many years in working on rights issues and citizenship education with young people, encouraging diversity, and giving young people the skills to take action.

As the European Union has grown, the nature of migration and travel has changed considerably; the free movement of people across borders, the growth of pan European education and labour opportunities, and changing socio-economic structures have all impacted upon people understanding of what it means to be a citizen and a European.

Typically, young people are the pioneers of these changes, and the first to test these new policies and opportunities. However, they are also very often the first to experience racism, xenophobia and discrimination in their new communities.

Having considered its experience in addressing these issues and bearing in mind that Girl Guiding and Girl Scouting should be accessible to all and reflect our society, the Europe Region WAGGGS decided to develop a project to support member organisations and other stakeholders addressing today's challenges.

With the support of DG Justice of the European Commission, WAGGGS developed a transnational project which aimed to promote Fundamental Rights and Anti-Discrimination. The project sought to enable European youth, particularly girls and young women to understand their fundamental rights as European citizens as set out in the EU Charter for Fundamental Rights. As such, the aim of this project was to promote awareness of fundamental rights and empower them to address issues of Discrimination, Racism, Xenophobia, Anti-Semitism, and Inequality in a variety of different ways. The project ended successfully in July 2010.

In this page you can now find information on the project activities as well as links to resources produced with and for our member organisations.

An Email Teaser Campaign and some briefing notes were created and circulated to address fundamental rights and discrimination issues concerning young people through peer support education, games and ideas. As a result of the feedback received, they have now been compiled in activity packs to be used at grass root level with Girl Guides and Girl Scouts.

Links to the activity packs in English can be found here and here.  For French see here and here.

The Europe Region WAGGGS in cooperation with project partners and the Overture Network worked on a publication that has gathered best practices and ideas for action in the field of Fundamental Rights and European Citizenship from different organisations that are involved in various projects on this topic. The publication aims at sharing information and lessons learned during the life of the project and working with member organisations. The work done to produce the publication enabled the Europe Region WAGGGS to assess the work done by Girl Guiding and Girl Scouting associations in order to reach out to minority groups and educate young people on Fundamental Rights. Girl Guides and Girl Scouts are doing a lot to raise awareness, educate and involve more and more youngsters, but there is still more to be done.

To download the publication click here

Workshops that address racism, xenophobia and anti-semitism were held at various different international events across Europe, such as Roverway 2009 in Iceland, and eurolife.03 in Germany. During these two large scale events, several young persons had the opportunity to learn more about their Fundamental Rights, discrimination, anti-Semitism and Islamophobia. They were enabled to organise activities with other youngsters back home and to raise awareness on these very important topics in their associations and communities.

During the project the Europe Region WAGGGS also contributed to the development of a World Leadership Development Programme, and in particular to the design of the training module on Diversity in Leadership. The work on the leadership programme found its basis on a deep belief that diverse and inclusive societies need diverse leaders. Leaders that do understand and represent diversity.

A WAGGGS video competition on racism, xenophobia and anti-Semitism was also held. Learn more here.

The Europe Region would like to take the occasion to thank again the Director General Justice for its support, without which this project would have not been possible.This project has received funds from the European Community.

The project, however, will be organised and will reflect the views only of the World Association of Girl Guides and Girl Scouts. The sole responsibility for this publication and its contents lies with the author and the Commission of the European Community is not responsible for any use that may be made of the information contained therein.