Italy
participants
The aim of the local dialogue was to gather qualitative information from participating youth about the barriers that young people face to accessing mobility and international opportunities and exercising their rights as mobile young people.
We had 21 participants including 19 local students and 2 international exchange students, three-quarters have spent a mobility experience abroad (some even more than one), one-quarter have not yet but plan to do so in the short term. Through open discussion (facilitated by 1 ESN volunteer) we have gathered information from university students about these key topics:
• Main motivations to go abroad for learning purposes (study, traineeship, volunteering)?
• Awareness about EU opportunities such as Erasmus, European Solidarity Corps and others.
• Challenges and barriers to participating in these opportunities: why so many young people do not access them? How can these barriers be overcome?
• Awareness about the rights of mobile and non-mobile young people as EU citizens.
• Impact of mobility and civic engagement: does mobility make more active citizens?
• Perception of the EU and European Democracy.
Outcomes
All participants agreed that nowadays it is not only preferable, but really necessary to spend at least one period abroad to acquire new skills as well as to mature from a professional point of view.
• Regarding the mobility opportunities offered by the EU, most people mentioned Erasmus+ and Erasmus Mundus.
• As for non-EU funded exchange programs AU PAIR was the most commonly known
• We asked the students about the biggest obstacles for participating in an international mobility and they mentioned the financial aspect, the housing problem and barrier relates to health care.
• Almost all participants attended meetings organized by their home universities prior to departure in which outgoing students were informed not only of the procedures to be completed but also of their rights and obligations as Erasmus students. All knew that they would enjoy the same rights as local students.
• Erasmus increases the feeling of belonging and consolidates the meaning of European citizenship, as well as shortening the cultural distances between the countries of the Union that are mainly reduced to linguistic and societal barriers.
This activity is part of the project:
Erasmus Generation in Action (EGiA)