Citizenship Education Project
Gonçalo da Silveira Foundation
The Citizenship Education Project is an initiative of the Active Citizens Fund in Portugal. The implementation of this project was attributed to a consortium, through an open call to all Portuguese Non-Governmental Organizations.
In February 2019, the consortium formed by the Gonçalo da Silveira Foundation and the Catholic University of Porto was selected to implement this project.
The Citizenship Education project aims to foster a systemic change in citizenship education and strengthen the role of civil society organizations in public policy and in promoting a more tolerant and involved society. Specific project objectives include: creating a metric to assess students’ “citizenship skills level” to design tailor-made programs to meet the needs of each group and measure the impact of education actions for citizenship; promote citizenship skills in the students of the schools involved; promote close cooperation between NGOs and schools, benefiting from their knowledge in different areas and also strengthen NGO intervention in public policy.
Running since September 2019 at the Gondifelos Schools Group (Famalicão), Damaia Schools Group (Amadora) and the Porto Santo Schools Group (Madeira Archipelago), the project involves students between 7th and 9th grade.
This is a research-action pilot project, with the collaboration of the European Wergeland Center (Norway) for its external monitoring and evaluation, and which has since its conception received the support of the Portuguese Ministry of Education. Based on the external evaluation of the projects and the results achieved, the resulting learning may be incorporated into public education policies, replicating the methodology used, duly adjusted to each school context, to the educational institutions all over the country.
Partner: Research Center for Human Development of the Universidade Católica Portuguesa
Thematic Area: Citizenship Education
Territorial scope: Famalicão, Amadora, Porto Santo
Duration: March 2019 – February 2022
Grant: 194 644 €, being 175 179 € from the EEA Grants and 19 465 € from the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation.