turkish-greek civic dialogue - AEGEE Europe

4. PUBLIC ACHIEVEMENT (PA)
................................................. Dennis Danovan, Serdar M. Değirmencioğlu
Workshop Leaders
Public Achievement (PA) is a term defining the initiative particularly widespread
in the US to involve youth in civic initiatives. In PA participation is on a voluntary
basis. PA enables young people to come together and to work in cooperation
with each other in a democratic manner. PA as a concept, which overlaps with
the concept culture of peace, was presented in the workshop by American and
Turkish PA experts, and was discussed as a model to be applied in furthering the
cooperation and partnership between Turkish and Greek youth. Workshop
participants discussed in groups about the matters they were disturbed by
and they had concerns with; afterwards they prepared projects from these
problematic areas and presented each other the simulations of the projects.
Association des Etats Généraux des Etudiants de L’Europe
www.publicachievement.com
Public Achievement is an international youth civic engagement initiative
for young people ages six to eighteen and older. It gives young people a
framework to learn citizenship skills by doing work of real importance in their
own communities. The simple idea behind Public Achievement is that ordinary
people of all ages have the desires, insights and talents to address society’s
problems and build a stronger community for all of us. With Public Achievement
young people learn the most important lesson about democracy: Democracy is
the work of all citizens, and needs the involvement and talents of all to truly
flourish.
Public Achievement is simple: Young people at schools and in community sites
identify issues significant to them. The issues may range from school-based
to neighborhoods to the global level. Working in small groups each week and
with the help of a coach, young people design action projects that have a real
impact. The team has to avoid any form of violence and use legal methods
to achieve its goals. The coach, who is often a university student or an adult,
guides the groups and helps the young people learn the public skills they need
to implement their own project.
Participation is completely voluntary. Young people work on issues they choose.
Public Achievement projects have been successfully carried out by children
as young as kindergarteners and include such things as creating a community
park, changing school rules and regulations, organizing a high school child care
center, and addressing community violence.
With Public Achievement young people learn how to work together in democratic
groups. They learn how to interact with public officials and others to get
things done. Young people who may struggle in school have the opportunity
to exercise leadership skills. They learn how to be effective with people who
have different viewpoints and values, and they learn how to persevere in spite
of the obstacles they encounter.
Public Achievement helps one learn life-long habits of commitment and
contribution, together with the skills needed to get things done. It helps
teachers, community leaders, and public officials learn about the talents and
interests of young people.
Public Achievement is well-suited for young people who would like to work on
building peace in their own local area and elsewhere. Public Achievement can be
used to build better relationships between Greece and Turkey. In our workshop,
the participants voted and identified three problems they thought were most
important: Prejudice and stereotypes, nationalism and the media. They then
joined a team to work on the problem they thought was most important. In
these teams, we simulated Public Achievement work to demonstrate how
young people can work problems to build better relationships between Greece
and Turkey. Below you can the reports from each team.
TEAM I: NATIONALISM
.............................................................................................................. by Pınar Önen
We were the participants who chose nationalism to work on. We formed a
group and started to work on what kind of action might be possible. Our coach
was Dennis Donovan. We discussed action ideas in a democratic way and tried
to decide which action might be feasible and possible. We decided to take
action in informing and educating people. We preferred to reach many people
rather than to work locally. We thought about interviewing people from both
Rebuilding Communication
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