Report about EC rural workshops

The objective of the Alliance UNITA Universitas Montium regarding the European Citizenship, which constitutes one of the axes of its action, is not limited to the communities of the respective Universities, especially their students. In this sense, the rural communities of the regions where the Universities that are part of the Alliance are located have a special role. These rural communities present some common elements, which characterize by extension the UNITA Alliance as a whole, and which present a special interest from the perspective of European Citizenship. Thus, it is about border regions, mountains and the southern part of the European construction project and with respect to them the purpose of the UNITA Alliance is twofold: on the one hand, deepening the knowledge of what the concept of European Citizenship represents, favouring the progressive consolidation of a European Identity, and on the other hand, receiving ideas and concerns from these communities in relation to possible lines of evolution that this concept of European Citizenship could follow to better respond to the concerns of regions such as those that make up the UNITA Alliance.
One of the main activities to achieve this objective is the development of workshops, which in some way transfer the experience of the online workshops developed in the respective Universities to rural settlements of the territories of each University of the UNITA Alliance. According to the provisions of the Project, this activity consisted of the Organization by each of the six member Universities of the Alliance of two workshops in rural locations. Those workshops were addressed, as has been pointed out, mainly to the populations of those rural settlements, but without neglecting other groups of people especially taken into account in the project as a whole, such as migrants or refugees. Likewise, the participation of students who had previously taken part in the online workshops was considered interesting, and encouraged, as a means of transferring the ideas developed in these workshops to the debate that could take place in those carried out in rural environments. And, in the same way, particular attention was paid to ensure gender balance among the people involved in these workshops.
This activity, included in the project with code 7.1.2, was developed by specialized teachers who put on the table approaches to European Citizenship of special interest to these rural communities. The twelve workshops carried out, two for each of the six UNITA Alliance Universities (Universities of Turin, Pau et des Pays de l'Adour, Savoie Mont Blanc, Beira Interior, West Timisoara and Zaragoza), were grouped into two rounds, the first extending from October 2021 to February 2022, and the second from November 2022 to May 2023.This Report describes the activity carried out in these workshops, showing them ordered chronologically and grouped into the two rounds already indicated. The Report points out in a summary way the programs of each of these workshops, mentioning both the topics and the specialists in charge of developing them, as well as the locations in which these workshops took place, the level of participation and, in those cases in which it was possible, the level of satisfaction of the participants with the content of the workshop and the suggestions raised by them. At the end of the report some images captured in the different workshops are included.