Susanne Zels and Sophie Pornschlegel founded the initiative Values Unite in June 2020 with the support from JoinPolitics in order to advocate for a European Agency for Citizenship Education (EACE).
Susanne developed the idea for the EACE at Polis180, a grassroots think-tank for foreign and European affairs, based in Berlin. This is where she conducted projects such as the election tool EUROMAT, the manifesto AlternativeEuropa! and the campaign jung&wählerisch as Program lead European identity and participated in a working group of the German Federal Foreign Office on foreign culture and education policy. She is managing the initiative and will lead to advocacy for the proposal.
Sophie joined the initiative to co-author a discussion paper to outline the proposal for the agency. She leads the project Connecting Europe and works as senior policy analyst at the Brussels-based European Policy Centre.
The initiative is non-partisan and open to everyone who wants to support European values and citizenship education. Values Unite receives funding and support from JoinPolitics, a non-partisan and independent startup, which seeks to support political talents and their ideas.