Citizen participation, active citizenship, neighbourhood empowerment and the mobilisation of volunteers to promote social participation. These are splendid objectives that can benefit municipal policy plans. Yet behind it all, there is still the question of what these objectives mean in concrete terms and of how adult education of citizens can be organised so they become active. The two European projects STAC (Strategies Towards Active Citizenship) and BRIDGE (Building Real Inclusion and Democratic Governance through Education) are examples of citizen participation and active citizenship that have been well-organised by adult education in Gelderland - examples with a direct result.

Confusio linguarum: citizen participation and active citizenship
Nowadays, innumerable concepts are wielded in policy texts and project descriptions under the common denominator “citizen activation”. The terms most used in our educational sector are citizen participation and active citizenship. What is the difference, if any?
There actually is a difference. Citizen participation processes are processes in which citizens are involved in influencing and shaping policy. Active citizenship is a step further and includes the participation of citizens in societal activities, such as organising a home visit project at their own initiative or organising ICT courses that young people teach to senior citizens.
Both terms reappear in a many educational project descriptions as objectives of social projects. But what is actually achieved under this common denominator?

Activation of citizens also on the map in Europe
The European Community emphasises the importance of activating citizens through local policy-making or participation in societal activities. Important condition is a concrete result. In the Netherlands, the STAC has been translated into “On a Trip around the World in Wijchen”. Last year, the ROC Nijmegen, Education and Integration division, Wijchen regional office, in collaboration with Spectrum Gelderland, developed a course in which neighbourhood residents were introduced to all sorts of opportunities to do volunteer work in their own immediate vicinity. In the end, approximately half of the course participants found a job as volunteer. In the area of activating citizens through education, Belgium, Italy, the Czech Republic, Ireland and the Netherlands shared their expertise and each country developed its own new range of courses for activating neighbourhood residents in their respective neighbourhoods. This resulted in five different methods that fit in with the local state of affairs in the given European country.
BRIDGE is a second project that focuses on activation. During this project, a training course for municipal civil servants was developed that enabled them to organise communication with citizens and develop a flexible project plan locally around citizen participation, all of this in order to use the talents of citizens for the benefit of local knowledge economy.
Spectrum Gelderland gave this training which had as result the implementation of local projects in a number of communities by using concrete topics (setting up shopping services, catching up on educational demand and providing additional advice for healthcare contact points (zorgloket) or social support (WMO)) and involving citizens in policy shaping.
The positive spin-off effect is that the community no longer shies away from communication with its citizens and uses the talents of its residents properly in order to develop good services for its own centres. This means that citizens can help contribute to a growing knowledge economy.

Citizens’ talents as community strength
A wonderful way to use citizens’ talents in the organisation of local services. Why indeed shouldn't people's knowledge and skills be used in order to develop activities that people can benefit from? They know better than anyone else what they want and they often have the experiences of fellow residents in sight. You just have to stimulate them and support them with the organisation. And that is precisely the strength of adult education!

Organising activation: a challenge!
It sounds simple enough, but organising the activation of citizens is complicated. This effort involves two things. .
First of all, you have to know where the citizen’s talents lie and where there are still a few gaps. In order to find this out, a flexible education system is indispensable. Secondly it has to be clear where citizens can use their talents in our knowledge economy. What can people do for their own benefit but especially for society as well? What they actually end up doing must be so challenging that it makes them yearn for more. The match between demand-oriented working and the challenge of flexible supply turns out to be rather difficult in actual practice. In adult education, this match can be made, whereby the STAC and BRIDGE projects are two European example projects where citizens’ talents are discovered, can be deployed in society and there is room for a flexible local policy.
For the most part, organising this sort of flexible activation of citizens by means of adult education has been a tricky issue, but thankfully, along with pressure from Europe, more opportunities are arriving and there is more room to allow citizens to thrive in an increasingly stronger knowledge economy and to lead to concrete results!

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