How we can educate children for their civic involvement

Ongoing civic projects tailored for deserving high-scool students

Christine Leșcu, 13.09.2023, 14:00

Since 2014, the 11even Association
has been annually staging the ‘Creators of Future’ camp as part of a
programme targeting students with educational performances who may also want to
get involved civically. Since its first edition, less significant in terms of
participants and, until recently, for the 2023 edition of the camp, ‘Creators
of Future’ has been gaining ground, yet several aspects have remained constant:
50 high-schoolers are selected annually from the winners in various national
and international Olympiads to spend a week, as part of a summer school where
they are being challenged by experts in an attempt to make them bring something
new to society. The camp is located near Cluj-Napoca, and the selection
criteria takes into account the students’ interests and abilities in certain
fields of activity, as Tudor Vasiliu, the initiator of the aforementioned
programme has told us.

Tudor Vasiliu:

We have four application domains: one is educational,
focusing on everything related to school events, such as Olympiads, national
and international school contests. Then there is a second one, which is the
sports domain, where we are focusing on sports performances. Then there is the
cultural domain, which comprises everything related to performance in art and
culture and I am talking here about high-school students who may have written a
book, who are painting or have obtained good results in art contests. Last but
not least is the field of school leadership, which is targeting the students
involved in various volunteering activities and are doing great things for
society.

The underlying idea for this
initiative was that the young people with performances in education are also most
capable of obtaining civic performances.

Tudor
Vasiliu:

We are trying to offer them as many
prospects as possible in a large number of domains through our invitees. We are
trying to invite people who have studied or who achieved success abroad and
then returned to Romania to bring their contribution and make a change here.
Looking back now, out of roughly 900 high-school students who have participated
in our programme along the years, I believe that 50%-60% are studying or have
studied in prestigious universities abroad. And somehow, we are trying to bring
these young people back to Romania on medium and long term. We are encouraging
them to study abroad if they believe this will contribute to their professional
development. But we underline the need for them to come back to Romania and
make a change here as well.

Adding
to that, here are a few examples of topics and guests that were seminal for the
September 2023 edition of the Creators of Future camp.

Tudor Vasiliu:

We had a wide range of topics for
debate. For instance, we invited Mihnea Măruță, a journalist
and the author of a recently-released volume focusing on digital identity, on
how this aspect takes its toll on our being, and on how we relate to the social
networks. We also invited Codruța Simina, a journalist focusing on the topic of
disinformation and that of the fake news. We also invited Răzvan Petri, and MA
student at King’s College in England who is working on a very interesting
project in Romania, basically targeting teenagers and dealing with politics.
With him too, we had a debate on the usefulness of politics and on how those
youngsters relate to the political sphere. We also invited the physician Mihai
Copăceanu, who organized a debate on drugs, we also invited the rector of Babeș-Bolyai
University, Daniel David, who gave a talk on the new Romania. We staged a
seminar offered by Răzvan Cherecheș, focusing on innovation since he is a
Public Health professor with the University in Cluj-Napoca and we also had two
guests who are active on Tik-Tok, yet they try to generate a change for the
better, conveying a positive message on this platform. One of them is a legal
educator, the other one has developed his own business using this platform.

Although
youngsters are sometimes perceived as being indifferent to political and civic
involvement, the high school students who convened as part of the Creators of Future program have invalidated such an opinion.

Tudor Vasiliu:

Their desire to get involved is a very strong one. Actually,
after every edition we in turn seek to get them involved, throughout the
schoolyear, in various activities. As regards politics, they may not be that
keen ion that, at their age. However, when it comes to civic involvement, they
really are anxious to get involved there. We even had, as part of the previous
editions, contests on projects that were subsequently financed and implemented.
As an outcome of this year’s edition as well, we want that, together with some
of them, we want to stage, in their communities of origin, several small-scale
events so they can invite guests who dares them to change, at once bringing
those people begore a younger audience.

Moreover,
Tudor Vasiliu also noticed that, among other things, Romania’s high-school
students are interested in how they can study abroad, they are also interested
in the online ideas and contents and, last but not the least, they also have
ecological preoccupations.