Partner countries for this project was from Norway, Turkey, Romania, Lithuania, Poland and Croatia.
The SWOT analysis was done through an evaluation questionnaire of the youth needs, communities and partners, questionnaire with qualificatives and also with “box texts” for detailing the subjects needs. The questionnaire was applied at 240 youth from the local communities (40 from each partner). Project organisers has outlined the 4 objectives thus they will be SMART, as follows: 1.At the end of the project all 60 youth feel themselves social included and non-discriminated. This was reached through the activities of nonformal education such as Debate, Albatros and other activities. 2.At the end of the project all 60 youth acquired new key competences through the nonformal education methods: public cafe, albatross, theatre and living library – increasing the self confidence and other activities during activities. 3.At the end of mobility all 24 youth with few opportunities feeled themselves social integrated, had trust in their own forces and will acquire new key competences which will help them in the active life. This happened through the activities of public cafe, living library and other activities. 4. Throughout the project, we developed a kind of tripartite cooperation between NGOs, youth and local authorities. The methodology was be based on non-formal educational methods such as, practical exercises and opportunities for experiential learning. Thus, during the whole project methods will be used, such as interactive presentations, open discussions, role plays and various creative workshops including individual and group work. This experience will be useful both for the participants and participation organisations. More information provided in the project brochure. During the project, an inclusive society was created in which we increased physical inactivity, decreased tobacco and alcohol consumption, and reduced excessive alcohol consumption. We tried new diets that included more healthy foods. In doing so, we did our best to create a healthy balance among project participants. Each participant promoted these values on their personal social media channels to set a good example as a member of the organisation and personal identity. A good example is that everyone wants to be healthy and that people in the real world care about the lives of others, which is more important than a person's personal success.
During the project, an inclusive society was created in which we increased physical inactivity, decreased tobacco and alcohol consumption, and reduced excessive alcohol consumption. We tried new diets that included more healthy foods. All the while, we did our best to create a healthy balance among the project participants. Each participant promoted these values on their personal social media channels to set a good example as a member of the organisation and personal identity. A good example is that everyone wants to be healthy and that people in the real world pay attention to the lives of others, which is more important than a person's personal success. This project effected our organisation daily routines: - We do move more while using bicycles or walking to the office and back. - During our activities we do choose more healthy snacks and more healthy food. - During our work we make more breaks to avoid stress in our daily work. By this project, we wanted to help address 2 main current issues: youth unemployment and the refugee/migration crisis. We considered these issues to be among the greatest challenges facing society at the time and in the future. According to the IOM, there were then some 65 million refugees fleeing from war and poverty. Over a million of those immigrants and refugees entered Europe since 2015. This was a global problem which called for joint efforts to achieve sustainable solutions. Hence, the project sought to enable youth workers to contribute to turning the challenges into opportunities for all stakeholders. We planned to do this by offering spaces for dialogue, non-formal education, and capacity building of youth workers to play a positive role in helping tackle the migration challenges. The related youth unemployment forced young people to seek a better life in other countries. In the new countries, those immigrant youth often faced social exclusion, discrimination, and marginalization. As immigrants, many of them lacked support from youth organizations that were not prepared to include immigrant youth in the youth associations in the host societies. The recent surge of refugees into Europe had triggered a rise in xenophobia and political rhetoric against immigrants and refugees.
The objectives were reached:
Being able to coexist, cooperate and communicate with people from different cultures was the norm in the globalized world. People easily moved from one place of the globe to another, for various reasons. And even though we all came from different backgrounds, had different social norms, habits and beliefs, we had to find understanding and respect among each other. But, our human world was a mixture of people where each of us was biased with our own outlook on the world in which we resided. Thus, getting in touch with other cultures different from ours made us understand ourselves better and appreciate cultural differences. Being interculturally competent represented a huge asset for both personal and professional life of people. Therefore, the main goal of the project was to promote understanding and collaboration between countries and cultures using music, dances and other artistic forms as a tool for breaking down barriers between young people from different backgrounds. Given that, we wanted to show young people coming from different parts of Europe that they could combine their cultures, backgrounds and talents and create something unique with mutual effort. In that regard, participants would organise a Final public event where they would represent different cultures by performing music, dances, and other artistic activities in order to show locals how important it is to appreciate cultural diversity. We wanted this project to serve as a positive example of what could be done by young people from different countries coming to work together towards a mutual goal. Thus, participants would be involved in various creative activities exploring the culture, as well as each others cultural backgrounds. Also, they would improve their talents in music, dancing, creating digital outputs, such as shooting photographs, filming and editing videos, etc. during jam music sessions, dancing traditional dances, and so on. Next, being able to visit the local community, participants would have an opportunity to share information about the project and the Erasmus+ Programme. We sought to show participants how they could use their time in a more qualitative way outside of their homes, schools etc. and become active members of their communities. Therefore, we were directed towards engaging youngsters across Europe and giving them opportunities to develop and express creatively in a context familiar to them.
Objectives that were achieved: 1. Using non-formal educational methods, such as interactive presentations, open discussions, and various creative workshops including individual and group work, where participants kad an opportunity to develop skills in the area of culture, music, social change, leadership, teamwork, intercultural learning etc 2. Participants practicaly tried and learned during the activities, both physical (hiking,outdoor team sports) and mental (yoga, meditation, laugh therapy). 3. Our group of young people from became aware of the importance of understanding mental health issues during this pandemic and how important it is to create good habits (such as meditation, sports, yoga, etc). 4. Participants from Lithuania developed tools for promoting music and culture on social media. Youth exchange “Identity” is in line with objectives and priorities of Erasmus + Programme. Gender equality is important step of socially inclusive societies based on tolerance, freedoms and respect of human rights. We believe that by this youth exchange we will contribute to creating such societies in Europe.
Youth exchange “Identity” was be based on different non-formal learning methods and techniques: getting to know techniques and methods to create open and supportive environment and break the barriers between the participants; discussion on the importance of gender equality, presentations of gender realities in participant’s countries, comparing the realities and identifying the roots of gender discrimination, simulation with aim to gain better understanding of the consequences of gender discrimination, especially discrimination of LGBTQ and the role of young people in the process of addressing it, work in mixed intercultural teams on posts containing information about gender being spread through social networks with aim raise interest of young people in gender, gender issues. Each day the participants will be meeting in their national teams and reflect on the project. After meetings in national teams group leaders will meet and discuss the feedback from the participants. Besides meetings in national teams the participants will have an opportunity to reflect on development of their competencies and strengthen their knowledge about the role and use of YouthPass. At the end of the project, each participant received YouthPass as recognition of their learning results. There are several strategies and energizers that may be employed at school or while having fun with pals. We discussed many fascinating subjects, such as COVID and how it affected people's life in various nations. With each other, we could compare notes and exchange stories.
On Instagram stories, we posted pictures and videos from this project. We would want to share more information with our friends about the project's activities, our extracurricular activities, and the lessons we learned from it. Our organisation shared experience with other organisations in these methods: 1. We learned new knowledge and teamwork games. Game names and icebreakers are ideal for removing communication barriers and helping participants get to know one another better. The participants will collaborate in diverse teams and we used these practises here back home in youth work. 2. During the project we used team-building exercises: Human bingo and Mission Impossible are two exercises that foster a sense of unity among young people. Youth worked together in international teams and get to know one another better, this method is now in use in our daily work. This climate change is impacting strongly on local communities around Europe, creating big problems for agriculture and housing.
Another big issue for the environment is the use of single-use plastic in our daily life. As settled in the European Strategy for Plastics in a Circular Economy it is important to introduce plastic into a circular economy, with the aim to have a completely recycled usage of plastic in the next years. "Green Heroes" is a project created by an idea of the students/participants/volunteers of Akademiet Oslo as, and it has the aim to promote a more sustainable way of living for young people, by increasing their awareness on the issues of climate change and global warming and by giving them tools and knowledges to act in a eco-friendly way and recognize how to buy sustainable products in their daily routine. This intercept the needs of the local community of the volunteers, who are daily facing serious problems with rubbish in their city and want to find a way to the local community in being more consistent on a green way of living. In addition, developing new ideas on how to minimize waste and recycle properly will be another important part of the project, in order to promote the reduction of the use of single-plastic products, which are detrimental for our environment. "Green Heroes" aims are to tackle challenges related to global environmental issues, sustainable growth and, especially, the lack of social involvement and engagement of young people, and to strive to encourage them to take serious action at any level by increasing their environmental citizenship. Those aims are strictly connected with the aims of the European Union and its plans to reduce pollution and single plastic use, as settled in the EU-wide plastic strategy. THE RESULTS: - 10 participants from Lithuania participated in the youth exchange that took place in Norway. Participants gained deeper insight into the influence of outdoor education on self-esteem, self-awareness. - Participants worked on the development of their personal and professional competencies in an international setting (communication, teamwork, problem-solving, conflict management, facilitation, and presentation). - This project inspired to organise river cleaning activity together with Kaunas university of technologies student union. The event will be organised during the spring time in Dzūkija national park. Activity participants will go kayaking and collect the trashes from the rivers - Ūla, Grūda, Merkys, Nemunas. All the information about this event will be posted in international website www.river-cleanup.org/en/lithuania As a result, the following project goals were attained:
a) Participants gained skills in human rights education and the methodology of human libraries; b) Participants gained knowledge of the process of realizing a human library as a means of addressing stereotypes, prejudices, and fighting discrimination; c) Participants helped create a socially inclusive society by organizing a "human library" during the youth exchange; d) Participants raised awareness of the process of realizing a human library as a way of addressing stereotypes, prejudices. In this project, we learned more about hate speech, discrimination, and social exclusion. We also gained knowledge of tools and activities that can be used to raise young people's awareness of these issues. We also learned about human libraries and developed skills that will be useful in the future, such as the job-search process and looking for mobility opportunities. During project activities, non-formal education methodologies were used, providing opportunities for experiential learning and practical exercises. Throughout the entire project, several creative workshops featuring both individual and group work were used, along with interactive presentations, candid talks, role plays, and numerous more workshops. This information will be applied by our organization in future work with adolescents. For this project gather 60 participants from 6 countries with multiple cultural, religious and social differences, which contributes to the multicultural spirit of the project. Active Life project raised awareness among young people about dance as a recreational activity in their lives, with an emphasis on its positive impact for a healthier lifestyle. Interactive non-formal education methods in a multicultural context, as well as practical activities (fitness, Zumba, dancehall, traditional dances, etc.),
These objectives and experiences were reached: 1) We raised awareness of the advantages of dancing as a form of physical recreation for the 60 young participants and the 12-month development of competencies through active participation in the project's planning, execution, and monitoring. 2) We participated with 60 young people in 5 real-world dance education events (fitness, during the dancehall competition, Zumba, traditional dance, and contemporary dance). 3) We got education together with 60 youth from the project partners' six communities about the both the significance of dancing as a physical activity and the risks of 6 neighborhood events planned by the young participants with assistance from partner companies. Additionally, the Erasmus+ program will be highlighted at each event. All this experiences will be used in the future camps and non formal activities with youth. The project's goal was to encourage young people's civic involvement and active citizenship so they could support socially viable societies. The youth exchange is highly participative and was designed to meet the unique requirements of the participants and partner organizations. Diversity, such as that found among the participants, was viewed as a resource for the sharing and transfer of skills, and the project's intercultural component received special consideration. The majority of the youth exchange was provided through practical workshops that the participants carried out in a learning-by-doing manner, utilizing the complete toolkit of non-formal education and experiential learning. There were just a few frontal lectures.
The participants in the project's self-confidence and young people's capacity for motivation. In order to encourage and guide participants as they tackle difficulties that promote their personal, professional, and organizational growth, the facilitators took care to create a secure and encouraging learning environment. The learning takes place both on individual basis as well as through synergetic team dynamics, all the while focused on the participants’ requirements. Transversal focus is placed on important supporting processes such as learning-to-learn, feedback, (self-)reflection, and self-directed learning. Our organization uses the youth exchange's learnings in ways that are applicable, transferrable, and sustainable, such as by developing thorough documentation and offering templates for customized development and action plans at all levels. Our methodology's consistent and ongoing use of self-reflection tools allows participants to recognize their strengths, have a deeper understanding of the learning outcomes, and be inspired to develop further techniques related to the project issue. |
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