From 24th to 26th of September the first meeting in the UPDATE* project took place in Brussels. The project is an "Open Youth" initiative, supported by the European Commission DG "Education and Culture" "Europe for Citizens" programme, with partner organizations from Hungary, Belgium and the Netherlands. During the meeting the project work process was defined, together with the tools and the steps for its implementation.

UPDATE aims to develop a genuine comics book, explaining to the young people in an interesting and understandable way their basic EU rights and how they can appeal to the European Ombudsman, and to adapt it to the world of mobile devices using AppStore platform as a pilot as it holds 75% of that market. This is a very powerful base for reaching tech savvy young people wherever they are. But it is still underused due to lack of information and experience. The project consortium believes that there are synergies that can be explored by cross-fertilizing regular channels with those innovative ones for promoting European citizenship rights to young Europeans. The comics book will be promoted offline, through regular people-to-people public awareness raising activities, and online through a shared Internet campaign. The developed comics book will be disseminated in at least 16 local actions in four different EU Member States.

"Media tablets are poised for strong growth with worldwide end user sales.  The expectations are the sales to surpass 208 million units in 2014." (Gartner) According to same analysts the total number of sold smart phones worldwide is expected to surpass 875 million in 2014 from "only" 267 million in 2010. According to IHS Screen Digest the number of downloads is expected to reach 33 billion in 2014.


* UPDATE – Unveiling European Union citizenship rights through Powerful messages, Developed in Attractive Technological Environment