ACTIVE CITIZEN EUROPE

Their core work

Active Citizen Europe is a Brussels-based NGO working at the intersection of migration, education, and civic participation. Their work centers on how schools and communities can better include refugee and migrant children — measuring integration outcomes, building intercultural competences, and designing participatory approaches that give voice to the children and families involved. They contribute to EU research consortia as field practitioners and civil society experts, grounding academic research in real-world community contexts. Their value to a consortium is bridging the gap between research methodology and lived experience of migration and social inclusion.

What they specialise in

How they've shifted over time

Their earliest project (IMMERSE, 2018) was strongly oriented toward measurement and diagnosis — mapping integration outcomes for refugee children using social indicators, educational indicators, and social psychology frameworks. The second project (NEW ABC, 2021) marks a clear methodological shift: away from top-down indicator mapping and toward participatory action research, care and compassion as explicit values, and the whole-child approach. The direction is from researcher-as-observer to researcher-as-facilitator, embedding community voice directly into the design of educational interventions.

They are moving from diagnostic research (measuring integration) toward co-designed, community-led interventions — making them increasingly attractive for Horizon Europe calls focused on inclusive societies, participatory research, and migrant rights.

How they like to work

Active Citizen Europe has never led an H2020 project — both participations are as a consortium partner. Despite only two projects, they have engaged with 23 unique partners across 11 countries, suggesting they are embedded in broad, multi-actor European networks rather than working repeatedly with the same small circle. This points to an organization that brings civil society credibility and community access to large academic-led consortia, rather than driving research agendas themselves.

Despite a small project portfolio of just two grants, Active Citizen Europe has connected with 23 distinct consortium partners spanning 11 countries — an unusually wide network for their size. Their Brussels base and NGO status suggest strong ties to EU civil society networks and policy circles around migration and education.

What sets them apart

As a civil society NGO based in Brussels, Active Citizen Europe occupies a niche that academic research institutes and think tanks rarely fill: direct community access to migrant and refugee populations combined with familiarity with EU policy processes. They bring practitioner legitimacy and participatory research capacity to consortia that might otherwise be dominated by universities. For a consortium seeking to demonstrate real societal impact and community engagement — especially on migration and education topics — they offer credibility that a research group cannot replicate.

Highlights from their portfolio

• NEW ABC
  Their largest grant (EUR 229,662) and most recent project, introducing participatory action research and the whole-child approach — representing the clearest statement of their evolving methodology.
• IMMERSE
  A long-running project (2018–2023) on refugee and migrant child integration in schools across multiple European countries, establishing their core identity in EU-funded social research.