What are the training needs of European teachers and trainers in the field of Global Citizenship Education?
If it is true that a picture is worth a thousand words, imagine how powerful the use of videos in today’s society is! If this video tells a good story and it does it in an emotional and engaging way, 
then the probability to impact on people’s understanding, awareness and opinion on a specific topic is very high.
The purpose of the BRIGHTS project is to promote Global Citizenship Education (GCE) in formal and non-formal Educational contexts in Europe, with the help of digital storytelling (DS) techniques. Therefore, as a first milestone of the project, the project partners have cooperated in the production of a report that analyses and describes the necessary competences for European teachers and trainers to effectively use digital storytelling as a didactic tool in the field of GCE.
The BRIGHTS Training Needs Analysis Report summarizes the results of a desk and field research conducted at European level between February and May 2017 and it stresses out the main pedagogical and content elements to be taken into consideration for the design of a blended course that, in the following months, will be offered to at least 400 interested professionals.
Around 90 in-depth interviews have been realized with GCE experts, policy makers, school and NGOs representatives, with the main aim of collecting their opinion on the relevance of general and specific topics of GCE, the benefits that such an educational practice can bring to different educational systems and the overall European society, as well as the added value of using digital storytelling with students and youngsters.
As a conclusion of this research phase of the BRIGHTS project, despite the different level of knowledge and practice in European countries about GCE and DS, we strongly believe that both formal and non-formal educational systems in Europe are ready to be equipped with new citizenship weapons.
This report, which is available online here, can be used either as an informative resource to approach the world of GCE for the first time and / or as a basis to plan and implement more extensive and focused studies in the field.
Last, but not least, an open call for contributions will remain published on the project’s website for the duration of the project, aiming at continuously collecting additional resources and inputs, as well as enlarging a GCE community of practice already established with a dedicated working group on the UNITE-IT platform.