When young citizens turn into "reporters"

Each year within the EU, 150 000 "Erasmus" students take the initiative to cross the borders of their country to make their way toward other horizons. They go away to taste life in one of the other 26 Member States of the Union. Does it have the same flavour "over there"? Is it appreciated differently? What impressions do they retain from this experience? Here, in a few images, the narratives of these "out of the ordinary" reporters.

In the end nothing is so very different, it seems, from the other side of the borders of one’s own country. In any case this is what emerges from the experiences encountered and transmitted by these Erasmus students, who have turned themselves into “citizen-reporters” for long enough to share them. In general, they remember this pleasant impression of feeling "at home" all over Europe, in these countries in which they immersed themselves with their whole beings, and which they learned about and "incorporated" little by little.

Here are the ten reports currently available:

Although these "border-crossing" students decided one day to act as "citizen-reporters", this is nonetheless not due to chance. It happened thanks to the project entitled "At home in Europe". This is the result of an initiative taken by a Belgian non-profit cultural association, MEDIEL asbl, with the support of the "Education, Audiovisual and Culture" Executive Agency (EACEA) of the European Commission (within the framework of the programme "Europe for the citizens"). Together they united their efforts to make available to these young people the technical teams and the material resources that would allow them to produce their "mini-reports".

But exactly what do these reports contain? "It is imperative for the students to remain the central actors in this project. We have therefore given them a free hand in their way of tackling the subjects, depending on their imagination and their centres of interest", producer André Bossuroy confides in us.

Thus, as an example, the report filmed in Northern Ireland invites us to follow two young Belgian students in the streets of Belfast. They seem to have been especially impressed by the citizen peace and dialogue initiatives developed by the authorities – and relayed by the "ordinary" citizens - in the atmosphere of conflict that remains latent between Catholics and Protestants, Unionists and Separatists. They invite us to follow them in the investigations that they made around this reality.

A significant part of the report on Belgium, for its part, was shot outside of its borders: in South Africa and in Madagascar. Hosted on site by a Belgian NGO (Comide) and within the framework of a European programme to raise awareness of development cooperation (DG Development and relations with ACP African, Caribbean and Pacific countries), two students went to Africa in order to become better aware of the difficulties of local life to which the development projects are trying to respond.

In the end, this angle of attack is rather symbolic of a state of mind relating to the very nature of the Belgian State: the narrowness of its territory pushes it, perhaps more quickly than others, to be interested in what is afoot outside of its borders.

It is true that these reports are not at all "conventional" in the way they are presented, because initially the students did not have any journalistic experience or professional skills in this area. Sometimes they even seem a little marked by naïveté. But in the end, it is perhaps precisely this naïveté, this spontaneity, that makes up all their charm! No sequins, no embellishments. Just the faithful image of the way these young people look at Europe, its challenges and what is at stake. Just the faithful stories of these ambassadors of openness and the necessary dialogue between peoples…

For more information, you can also visit the Internet site dedicated to the project "At home in Europe".

Terms:

reporters At home in Europe

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Belgian Presidency of the Council of the European Union

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