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  • How we can educate children for their civic involvement

    How we can educate children for their civic involvement

    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.