The current global scenario requires Education and training institutions and practitioners to assume greater responsibility than ever in helping learners of all ages and backgrounds to develop into informed, critically literate, socially-connected, ethical and engaged global citizens.

In this context, the BRIGHTS “Boosting Global Citizenship Education using digital storytelling” project aims to promote Global Citizenship Education (GCE) in formal and non-formal Educational contexts with the help of Digital Storytelling (DS) techniques, leading to more socially inclusive education and training policies and practices in Europe. Its objectives are:

• Increase and improve teachers’ and trainers’ capacity to implement GCE with young people using DS;
• Empower young people in the acquisition and development of social, civic and intercultural competences as well as critical thinking, media literacy, creativity and digital skills through the production of digital stories on Global Citizenship.
• Develop of a European online community on GCE able to sustain project results and amplify their impact.

BRIGHTS was implemented by 7 partners from Belgium, Croatia, Greece and Italy. The  BRIGHTS Course Curriculum, intended to provide information about the blended course “Addressing Global Citizenship Education through Digital Storytelling”, was produced at the beginning of the project in all project languages. In the first pilot phase, more than 1200 secondary school teachers and youth workers from the participating countries enrolled in the BRIGHTS MOOC “Addressing Global Citizenship Education through Digital Storytelling” and 500 of them completed it. In the second pilot phase, more than 100 successful teachers and youth workers were trained through face-to-face workshops. Afterwards, they applied the BRIGHTS methodology with young people (aged 13-19) in schools and in non-formal educational contexts of disadvantaged areas. More than 1200 young people were empowered in challenging radicalization and social exclusion and developed digital, social, civic, and intercultural competences through the creation of digital stories (473 digital stories produced!). On the policy level, we produced the BRIGHTS Informative Kit on Global Citizenship Education for policy makers and policy recommendations based on the pilot evaluation results to raise awareness on the BRIGHTS values, objectives and activities among policy-makers and the civil society.

BRIGHTS also launched the first European online working group on Global Citizenship Education: the aim of this community is to involve all actors interested in the topic and willing to support and advocate for the potential adoption this inclusive educational methodology in different contexts and at different levels through the use of digital tools.

BRIGHTS was co-funded by the Erasmus+ Programme of the European Union under the Action KA3 Social Inclusion through Education, training and youth. It started on the 31^st of December 2016 and lasted 2 years.